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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 












# 








A HANDBOOK OF 
SHORT STORY WRITING 




A HANDBOOK OF 
SHORT STORY WRITING 


BY 

JOHN T. FREDERICK 

Editor of The Midland 


REVISED 

EDITION 


NEW YORK F. S. CROFTS CO. MCMXXXII 


rfN3373 

.Rr 

. I q3Z 

COPYRIGHT, I924, I932, BY F. S. CROFTS & CO., INC. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED — NO PART OF THIS BOOK 
MAY BE REPRINTED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT 
PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER 


FIRST PRINTING, SEPTEMBER, I 9 2 4 
SECOND PRINTING, OCTOBER, I 926 
THIRD PRINTING, JULY, I 9 2 8 
FOURTH PRINTING, MAY, 193° 
REVISED EDITION 
FIFTH PRINTING, APRIL, I932 


MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

MAY -5 i932 

©Cl A 4 !)"& 3 0 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

PAGE 

I. 

Aim and Motive 

ii 

II. 

The Writer’s Tools 

18 

III. 

Finding a Story 

23 

IV. 

Planning the Story 

30 

V. 

Characterization 

40 

VI. 

Setting 

56 

VII. 

Style 

62 

VIII. 

Beginnings and Endings 

68 


s 








' 







INTRODUCTORY NOTE 


The material presented in the first edition of this 
book was based upon a course in short story writing 
given at Pittsburgh in 1923, amplified in courses at the 
State University of Iowa. The revised edition is in 
part the outgrowth of further courses in this field at 
the State University of Iowa, and, more recently, at 
Northwestern University and the University of Notre 
Dame. The book as a whole, however, is as much the 
product of my experience as editor of The Midland , 
since its founding in 1915, as of my teaching. 

I have not sought to prepare a handbook for com¬ 
mercial writers, since many such books are already in 
the market. The present volume approaches the writ¬ 
ing of short stories primarily as a matter of artistic 
expression. Its purpose is to suggest concrete means 
and methods for the beginner in the practice of this art. 

I wish to express my gratitude, for introduction to 
some of the principles I have tried to present and for 
some of the illustrative material, to my former teachers 
and associates, C. F. Ansley and Percival Hunt; for 
assistance in connection with the first edition, to Walter 
J. Muilenburg and George Carver; and for helpful 
suggestions which have been embodied in both the first 
and the revised editions, to Frank Luther Mott. 

John T. Frederick. 


March 15, 1932. 


7 








SHORT STORY 
WRITING 











CHAPTER I 


AIM AND MOTIVE 

At the beginning of any systematic study, however 
informal, it seems desirable for us to ask ourselves 
what it is that we are trying to do and why we are 
trying to do it. I am aware that this is not always 
easy. Indeed, if full and satisfactory answers to 
these two questions were required of all of us who 
teach, it is likely that the curricula of educational in¬ 
stitutions would undergo a notable shrinkage. Never¬ 
theless, I persist in the opinion that some attempt in 
this direction is desirable. 

We are confronted at once, then, by the formidable 
question: What is a short story? — a question the 
answer to which consumes from perhaps a tenth to as 
much as a fourth of the total content of most of the 
books in the field. I must confess promptly that I am 
not excited by this matter of definition. In aesthetic 
matters especially, it seems to me, academic and formal 
definitions are as a rule both ineffectual and trivial; 
and I am fully convinced that in the study of short 
story writing too much stress has been laid upon them. 

Fifty years ago Brander Matthews defined the 
“ short-story ” in a set of terms which laid emphasis 
upon form — structure and manner — and took little 


ii 


12 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


account of anything else. It has been the misfortune 
of the short story in America that this inadequate 
definition has been amplified, elaborated, and insisted 
upon by most subsequent writers on the subject. 
Definitions in terms of certain formal elements have 
led to the assumption that all short stories which 
possess these qualities are good and all which lack 
them are bad, and that the best short story is that 
which most brilliantly exemplifies the technical quali¬ 
ties referred to. The result has been that very little 
approval has been forthcoming for vitality and sig¬ 
nificance of material, or for sincerity and integrity 
of purpose, unless these have happened to be poured 
into the conventional mold. 

Against the rigid maintenance of these artificial 
standards our most significant writers have been 
mutinous. (Witness, for a single example, Stephen 
Crane’s “ The Open Boat.”) In our own days this 
mutiny has assumed the proportions of a definite 
revolt, signaled by the work of such writers as Sher¬ 
wood Anderson, Ruth Suckow, Ernest Hemingway, 
William March, and Leo L. Ward. 

The time has come, certainly, for a shift of emphasis. 
The aim of short story writing must no longer be de¬ 
fined in terms of approximation of artificial canons 
of form and method, but primarily in terms of the 
sincerity of the writer and the significance of his 
material. Probably the reason the artificial canons 
have been so enthusiastically propagated by academic 
critics is the fact that they are easily taught. Almost 


AIM AND MOTIVE 


13 

anybody can present and apply a series of artificial 
doctrines of form, and almost anybody can learn to 
make something which superficially conforms to the 
stipulated patterns. But results indicate that this is 
not the way to teach, or to learn, really to write. If 
the student is to gain from his work the development 
and enrichment which the conscientious practice of an 
art alone can give, he must approach the work from 
the standpoint of the significance of his material 
and the sincerity of his own response to it. It seems 
safest, then, to avoid all the dangers of elaborate 
artificial definitions, and to say simply that what we 
aim to produce is a brief narrative of significant hu¬ 
man experience. Whether this is or is not a “ short 
story ” is less important than some other things in 
the universe. 

More valuable than the scientific definition of the 
aim of our work is a conscientious examination of our 
motive in undertaking it. Why do we want to write 
short stories? The answer to this question seems to 
me profoundly important. In reading the manu¬ 
scripts which have been submitted to The Midland 
during the past twenty years, I have asked myself 
over and over: What was the motive which lay behind 
the making of this story? Why was it written? Was 
it because the writer had a story to tell, because some 
phase of human experience had so laid hold upon him 
that he could not but render it into words with such 
craft as he could command? Or was it because he 
desired to obtain a cent a word? 


H 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


I have no fault to find with the writers of stories 
of the latter class, nor with the editors who print them. 
So far as the editors are concerned, they are primarily 
business men, with the profits of their employers to 
safeguard; and most of them publish just as many 
sound and significant stories as the taste of their 
readers and the talent of their contributors will permit. 
Neither, on the other hand, are the makers of the 
stories to be blamed; for they too are business men, 
manufacturing specific products for specific demands. 
This is a business as honorable and as useful as many 
another, its main disadvantages being its uncertainty 
and the arduous apprenticeship it requires. The only 
persons who are culpable in this situation are those, 
usually critics and teachers of short story writing, 
who confuse the young writer by telling him that 
learning the “ art ” of the short story consists in 
mastering a number of the customs and devices of the 
business of commercial writing. As a matter of fact, 
writing for the more highly specialized commercial mag¬ 
azines has little more to do with literature than illus¬ 
trating a Sears Roebuck catalogue has to do with 
painting. The editors and the writers (as a rule) are 
either more intelligent or more honest than the critics 
and teachers referred to. They do not talk about art. 

Nor do I mean to deny the virtues of hard cash. 
Once we have written a story, it is expedient for most 
of us to try intelligently to sell that story. I have 
a great respect for checks, the larger the better. But 
I do believe profoundly that nearly every man or 


AIM AND MOTIVE 


IS 

woman who undertakes the study of short story writ¬ 
ing with a motive purely or primarily mercenary 
makes a serious mistake. 

In the first place, the chances in the business, as a 
business, are poor. The alleged earnings of certain 
writers of great popular renown have been falsely 
emphasized by those “ teachers ” who seek to attract 
students to commercial courses in short story writing 
which are highly profitable — to the teachers. As a 
matter of fact, I venture to say that fewer people are 
actually making a living by writing short stories in 
America today than by teaching others to write them. 
For one neophyte who eventually sells a tale to the 
Ladies’ Home Journal , there are a hundred who are 
never heard from, or whose best luck is the meager 
check of some wood pulp monthly. If you want to 
make money, I should say to the aspirant, you had 
much better undertake the merchandising of woolen 
underwear or the repairing of Fords. These voca¬ 
tions are easier to learn and less overcrowded, and 
the average returns are far higher. Also, I have an 
old-fashioned notion that you have a better chance of 
saving your soul. 

Does this mean that there is no object in studying the 
short story, in trying to learn to write it? For some 
I suppose it does. For others, capable of perceiving 
immaterial values, it most emphatically does not. 
No art diligently and understandingly pursued will 
fail to reward the student, least of all the art of 
fiction. For the genuine student of the short story 


i6 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


there are returns so important and so assured, quite 
independent of the favor of the editors of commercial 
magazines, that I venture to explicate them in some 
detail. 

In the first place, study of the short story demands 
of us that we shall observe our world. Places and 
people must become vivid in our experience if we are 
to set them down on paper successfully. Most of us 
live insulated lives, almost totally devoid of conscious 
response to our environment. We walk down a street, 
but it is A — street for us, not a living picture of 
grey elms and trodden grass and old brown houses. 
We converse with this man and that without becom¬ 
ing alive to faces, to expressions, even to clothes. An 
opaque shell of insensitiveness, of the accumulated 
habit of not noticing, surrounds us. To a large ex¬ 
tent, this shell can be broken by conscious effort. 
As we practice observation of people and places in 
our effort to become able to write short stories, our 
experience of the world becomes richer and more vivid. 

Even more important than this is the demand which 
short story writing makes upon us to understand people 

— to perceive their problems, to feel the forces which 
are brought to bear upon them, and to share in their 
emotions. It is the first duty of the short story writer 
to project his personality into the experiences of others 

— to learn to feel as they feel, to see life as they see 
it. If he can do this easily and completely, he has 
one of the qualifications of the great artist. And even 
though in his effort to write he can achieve only 


AIM AND MOTIVE 


i7 

spasmodic and incomplete identification of his experi¬ 
ence with that of others, he yet has won something of 
insight and sympathy which may contribute ines¬ 
timably to his happiness in the ordinary relations of 
life, and which may even help him to some measure of 
understanding of himself. 

Finally, even the humblest apprentice to the craft 
of story writing will find that if he has worked in 
the true spirit of the craftsman he has gained some¬ 
thing of the craftsman’s capacity to appreciate his mas¬ 
ters. Just as a trained musician can hear more in Bach 
or Beethoven than the average man, so one who has 
himself tried to set down human experience in the re¬ 
fractory medium of words can more fully than before 
enjoy the work of the great writers, not only of the 
short story but of the novel and the drama as well. 

To live in a brighter, more intimate, more vivid 
world; to know people, and perhaps oneself, more un- 
derstandingly; to read Conrad and Chehov and the * 
rest with fuller enjoyment than before — these are 
the motives which should justify a study of short 
story writing. If these are not enough, let’s shut the 
book and drop the course. 


CHAPTER II 


THE WRITER’S TOOLS 

Dependence upon things is one of the perennial frail¬ 
ties of human nature. We must have medicines to 
cure our ills, churches in which to worship God, 
marriage licenses approved by the state — with what 
degree of effectuality in many cases, indication is 
not lacking. And here am I, ministering to the crav¬ 
ing for objects, for paraphernalia, for traps and bag¬ 
gage, by writing as the second in this book a chapter 
about things. What weapons shall I take with me on 
this Great Adventure, breathlessly demands the 
Young Writer; what improved and patented salt- 
shakers wherewith to sprinkle the tail feathers of in¬ 
spiration? And complaisantly I make reply. 

Books, naturally, are a part of the equipment of 
any one who sets out to make books. But of books 
which “tell how”—books on short story writing 
(including this one) — I have little good to say. At 
best, they may afford to certain students slight stimuli, 
or give minute and particular guidance in methods of 
procedure; at worst, they may be gravely, even dis¬ 
astrously, harmful. So far I have found few that I 
care to commend. Sound historical discussion is con¬ 
tained in Edward J. O’Brien’s The Advance of the 
American Short Story. Suggestive and illuminating 
18 


THE WRITER’S TOOLS 


19 


discussion of writers’ problems is to be found in 

N. Bryllion Fagin’s Short Story Writing , an Art or a 
Trade, now out of print; in Edward J. O’Brien’s The 
Dance of the Machines; and in Henry Goodman’s ex¬ 
cellent introduction to his Creating the Short Story. 

Much more important, and nearly certain to be 
helpful, are books of short stories themselves. I 
have (as the editor of one) little use for volumes of 
selections, or short story anthologies, so far as the 
student of the art is concerned. What the student 
needs to do in his reading is to observe the methods 
of a master in dealing with all kinds of people and 
situations. For that purpose only a comparatively 
full presentation of the master’s work is adequate. 
Further, I believe that most students will gain more 
from such a study of a fairly recent writer of un¬ 
questioned importance than from one of earlier times. 
Hence I recommend Conrad, Stephen Crane, Chehov, 
Katherine Mansfield, rather than Poe and de Maupas¬ 
sant; and of writers now producing, Ruth Suckow, 
Galsworthy, A. E. Coppard, James Joyce, Sherwood 
Anderson, and Thomas Mann. Edward J. O’Brien’s 
annual anthologies, Best Short Stories of 1915 , etc., 
illustrate admirably the current progress of short story 
writing and are highly valuable to the student. The 

O. Henry Memorial Prize Award volumes tend to re¬ 
flect commercial standards and popular taste, but con¬ 
tain some excellent work. In the first appendix to 
this handbook I have assembled a list of titles and pub¬ 
lishers for the student who is interested in the books 


20 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


to which I have referred. This list includes volumes 
which contain all stories referred to in the text. 

Books are a part of the writer’s equipment for his 
task, and the study of them is a part of the task itself; 
but the crucial moments in his development as a 
writer are those unconsidered hours of every day in 
which he closes the books, shuts the door of the library, 
and goes out among men. The most valuable aids he 
can bring to his task are alert and accurate percep¬ 
tions, “an eye to see and an ear to hear”; response 
to fragrances and flavors; awareness of the loom and 
push of hills, the stress of walls. 

The student has before him the tremendous problem 
of transferring an experience, built of his observa¬ 
tion and intuition, to the reader of his story — of 
adding to the experience of that reader something 
which was not his before. To achieve this with the 
force of reality, the student must himself perceive 
reality. He must see more vividly than he has seen 
before, hear more keenly. He must note and remem¬ 
ber the gestures of people, the details of their costumes, 
intonations, facial expressions. He must be attentive 
to the colors, shapes, smells, tastes, tactual and muscu¬ 
lar sensations of objects and places. He must intensify 
his own response to the objective world, at the same 
time clarifying and commanding it. 

In his first effort to transfer to another an experi¬ 
ence which he himself has found vivid, the student 
will become aware of the relation between this effort 
and his supply of words; and he will begin the game 


THE WRITER’S TOOLS 


21 


which will last as long as he writes — that of finding 
the one perfect word for the impression which he wishes 
to convey. Here perhaps he will first become aware 
of the need for a notebook — as well as a good dic¬ 
tionary, and possibly a thesaurus. Not all writers, 
to be sure, use notebooks. Some are able to depend 
upon memory, conscious and subconscious, to supply 
them with details as they write. But for nearly all 
of us records of observation are highly valuable. 
The notebook should be easily portable, easily used 
under all conditions, and of such a nature as to per¬ 
mit the rearrangement and filing of its contents. A 
packet of small index-cards — 3x5 or 4x6 — may 
serve as well as anything else. Into this notebook 
will go the student’s experiments and explorations in 
the search of words. It is worth while to engage from 
time to time in the effort to find adequate expression 
for objects and actions immediately observed: That 
whistle now sounding — what verb will make a reader 
hear it? That girl’s toque — what is its color against 
the factory wall? This may suggest to the student 
the possibility of investigating his vocabulary in re¬ 
lation to certain important matters: How many color 
words has he — how many tones and shades of red 
can he distinguish, for example? How many verbs 
can he command for the simple task of telling how a 
man crosses a street? 

The student’s notebook, however, will contain more 
than exercises in diction. It should give place for 
fragments of articulated description — a bridge at 


22 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


ni^ht, a hotel lobby — such as might be needed in 
stories. It should contain snatches of conversation, 
accidental glimpses of people and their relations — a 
dispute in a restaurant, the titles of a bundle of books 
on the arm of a straphanger. (See Appendix II.) 

Finally, the notebook should give service when the 
student finds his mind fertile with “ ideas for stories,” 
as it sometimes will be. There are hours when for 
some obscure reason story situations, bits of finished 
phrasing for projected narratives, and even fully devel¬ 
oped plans will appear in the writer’s consciousness, 
seemingly spontaneously and often in rapid succession. 
At such times a notebook which is always carried and 
which can be used under any circumstances is invalua¬ 
ble. It should afford means of preserving these ger- 
^ minal ideas and vaguely planned narratives, under 
whatever circumstances they may come; for such har¬ 
vestings of the subconscious are by no means confined 
to propitious hours and places. In the chill of the next 
morning’s daylight most of the treasured items will be 
found valueless; but a few will repay many times the 
effort made in their preservation. 

I need not add to this listing of necessary equipment 
the obvious quantities of large and immaculate sheets 
of paper, the free-flowing pen or typewriter or (my 
own preference) a gross of soft pencils. Nor shall I 
dwell here upon the most important of all the pos¬ 
sessions which the student must bring to his work; 
for the power to feel and the eagerness to express — 
these are a part of the student himself. 


CHAPTER III 


FINDING A STORY 

The process of finding a story varies widely for 
different writers, and for the same writer in different 
cases. For one student the most productive sources 
of short story ideas may be the daily newspapers, 
with their announcement of the sensational and the 
dramatic in human affairs. Another may find his 
stories growing up always about individual men and 
women, some of whom he may have seen only once 
and then imperfectly. Generally speaking, however, 
the best stories are those which spring most spon¬ 
taneously from the writer’s own experience. Some 
incident or circumstance in his own life, or in that 
of some one he knows more or less intimately, will 
arrest his attention. And in the effort to record, to 
express, this fraction of experience, with its prepara¬ 
tory and subsequent circumstances, he writes a story. 

Let us note well that word “ experience,” the key¬ 
stone in what of definition of the short story we have 
attempted. It means the actual living through an 
event or succession of events. The element of pro¬ 
gression is inherent in it. It implies dynamic, not 


23 


24 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


static, relations of men and women to one another 
and to their general environment. In our search for 
stories we must see to it that we find what is truly 
experience — a series of related events or happenings, 
resulting either in change or in reaffirmation of exist¬ 
ing human relationships, conditions, or ideas. 

True, many of the finest modern stories are stories 
of which we are likely to say, “ nothing happens in 
them.” By this we mean that they are relatively 
devoid of incident or event, that their purpose is to 
achieve participation by the reader in some usual and 
unexciting portion of the lives of the characters, rather 
than in some crucial and decisive portion. And if 
such a story gives us this participation in quiet hours 
with sufficient richness and insight we are well satis¬ 
fied — at least lam — to forego exciting events. 

Usually, however, a short story is built around a 
definitely dramatic situation. Most frequently the 
purpose of the story is to secure participation on the 
reader’s part in the experience of a single central 
character throughout a series of incidents in which 
he is confronted by circumstances which demand of 
him some decision or action. The incidents afford the 
structural framework; and the problem to be solved — 
the question which must be answered by what the 
central character says or does — may be called the 
central dramatic situation of the story. 

Sometimes, to be sure, the dramatic element in the 
story is not such as to call for anything which may 
be called decision or action: it may have the nature 


FINDING A STORY 


25 


of stress to be endured rather than of obstacles to be 
overcome or problems to be solved. In other cases 
the purpose of the story may be a progressive revela¬ 
tion of character through a series of events or situa¬ 
tions which are of approximately equal importance. 
In such a case it may be impossible to point to one 
situation as central. Still other stories aim at presen¬ 
tation of the contrasting reactions of two or more 
people to the same set of circumstances, or at sharing 
by the reader of the common experience of a group. 
In such stories we may not be able to distinguish a 
single central character. The kinds of experience 
which may find reflection in short stories are number¬ 
less, and one of the worst mistakes a young writer can 
make is the adoption of the idea that only one form — 
one type of structure — is desirable or worthy. 

The young writer who wishes to train himself in 
the finding of stories may well begin by the analytical 
study of a number of stories of the kind he would 
like to write, identifying if he can their central dra¬ 
matic situations — the nuclei of experience about which 
they were formed. In reading a story, the student 
may ask himself first, “ Who is the central character? ” 
and then “ What is the crucial situation, the ultimate 
problem, the set of circumstances demanding decision 
or action? ” He may write out, for each story he 
studies, as brief a statement as possible of its central 
dramatic situation. 

The student may now turn to the search for dra¬ 
matic situations of his own. He should look first into his 


26 SHORT STORY WRITING 

own life, for it should be apparent that the young writer 
who seeks to achieve work of literary significance 
must begin with the material he knows best. He will 
ask himself where in his own life he has faced dra¬ 
matic situations around which stories might be written 
— situations which demanded of him decision or 
action or endurance, which resulted in development or 
at least in expression of his character. A second source 
of story ideas may be found in the experience of 
friends and acquaintances, or of members of one’s 
family. Where have they experienced situations which 
might be dealt with in story form? What decisions 
have they had to make, what have been the points of 
dynamic relationship in their lives? The student may 
recognize the fact that at the present stage in his 
literary apprenticeship jhe is not able to deal ade¬ 
quately with some of these situations as literary 
material, but for the present purpose that is imma¬ 
terial: he is trying simply to accustom himself to the 
recognition of dramatic situations when he comes to 
them. 

The student may now turn from these fields of 
direct observation to others in which the recognition 
of dramatic situation will call'for a more imaginative 
relation to his material. One fruitful field for study 
will be found in consideration of the occupation or 
profession which the student knows best: what are its 
typical dramatic situations, the problems and conflicts 
most likely to arise in it, which might be suitable for 
presentation in short stories? Some writers find news- 


FINDING A STORY 


27 

papers useful as sources of ideas; a news item may em¬ 
body very clearly a dramatic situation around which a 
story can be built. A better source, in my opinion, is ac¬ 
tual observation of people and incidents; even brief and 
fortuitous contact may suggest rich possibilities. We 
may look at a fellow-passenger on the street-car, 
noting his hands, his clothes, his face, the paper he is 
reading; and then try to go with him imaginatively 
into his home that evening, asking ourselves what 
dramatic situation may be awaiting him there, what 
story he may be living even now. We may listen to the 
conversation of two co-eds in the booth next to ours 
at the campus “hang out,” and build a story from 
what we hear. We may note the look on the face of 
a farmer who is standing on the steps of a country 
bank, and build up within ourselves realization of the 
events and experiences which have etched his face. 

I have indicated five specific fields for the student’s 
search for ideas for stories: his own life; the experi¬ 
ence of friends; the profession or occupation he knows 
best; the newspapers; chance observation of people or 
incidents. The young writer will do well to deal with 
each of these fields systematically, reducing to written 
form a number of possibilities from each. He will 
then wish to subject these ideas, one by one, to care¬ 
ful consideration as to its probable usefulness for 
actual development. Some he will find too big 
— the germs of novels rather than of stories. 
Others may seem too trivial, or may lack emotional 
appeal which would generate in his consciousness 


28 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


the texture of a complete story. Still others he 
may realize himself unfitted to deal with, for one 
reason or another. If his purpose is partly or 
primarily commercial, he will have to be governed in 
this consideration by the demands of the market 
for which he wishes to aim: for commercial suc¬ 
cess in story writing is very seldom obtained except 
by careful study of a given market and definite effort 
to meet its requirements. The young writer will soon 
realize that he can well afford to choose for further 
treatment only those dramatic situations which appeal 
to him most strongly and which he feels best fitted to 
handle. As he develops his ability to recognize story 
material, that material will come crowding upon him 
in ever increasing richness. Any environment offers 
infinite variety — the beautiful and the grotesque, the 
heroic and the comic. His only problem will be how 
to choose from all this wealth. 

In this whole matter the student who undertakes 
to write for literary rather than commercial ends 
enjoys a freedom which would be impossible were he 
aiming at a market: of necessity the editors of com¬ 
mercial magazines reject, in deference to the sensi¬ 
bilities and prejudices of their readers, most stories 
with tragic endings and all stories dealing honestly 
with certain phases of undeniably significant experi¬ 
ence. In the choice of his material, however, the 
young writer will do well to curb his ambition to 
some extent. In one’s first stories it may seem ad¬ 
visable, on the whole, to deal with not quite the 


FINDING A STORY 


29 


greatest extremes of human passion. Indeed, the 
young writer is most fortunate who can perceive the 
literary possibilities in the everyday affairs of ordinary 
men and women, and can enjoy the effort to reveal 
the significance of seemingly commonplace material. 


CHAPTER IV 


PLANNING THE STORY 

It is necessary to begin a chapter on “ planning the 
story” by noting that many writers say that they 
never plan their stories, and that of some this is actu¬ 
ally true. There are a few writers who sit down at 
their desks with only a title, or the name of a place 
or a character, or a phrase “ with a bit of slideway to 
it,” and proceed to write a story which shapes itself 
as they go. Seemingly in the case of such writers 
composition proceeds more directly from the subcon¬ 
scious than it does for most of us. Other writers who 
say they do not plan their stories mean only that they 
do not commit the plans to paper. They may work 
for days on a story, elaborating it in their minds, 
testing and rejecting or modifying incidents and char¬ 
acters and details, even composing the whole story 
sentence for sentence and word for word, as O. Henry 
is said to have done: all this before they touch pencil 
to paper. They are then ready, of course, to go 
straight forward with the actual writing without the 
intermediate step of a written plan. But the planning 
has bean done none the less. For most of us the use 
of a written outline, perhaps even of several successive 


30 


PLANNING THE STORY 


3i 


outlines of increasing fullness, will be definitely help¬ 
ful, especially in the earlier years of our apprentice¬ 
ship. 

I am convinced that there is one method of plan¬ 
ning the story which, for most writers and most stories, 
is more satisfactory than any other. This is a method 
based upon the conception of the story as composed 
of dramatic incidents , comparable to the scenes of a 
play. Whenever the curtain would go down in a play, 
to provide for a change in scene or to allow for a lapse 
of time, we may say that one incident ends and another 
begins. Unlike the scenes of a play, however, some 
of the incidents will present progressively changing 
settings. Also, in most stories the incidents are bound 
together, and their interrelations are revealed, by 
means of non-dramatic portions of the story which we 
may call transitional material. Sometimes this non- 
dramatic or transitional material occupies* a large part 
of the story. But it may be broadly stated that stories 
which make a relatively close approach to the struc¬ 
ture of short plays — consisting of a small number of 
well developed incidents closely related to each other 
— are most likely to be effective. The beginning writer 
will as a rule do well to aim toward structure of this 
kind. 

A preliminary exercise in this matter of planning 
the story may consist of a study of a large number of 
stories of the kind in which the student is most inter¬ 
ested, to discover and to consider their dramatic struc¬ 
ture. The student should first read the story through, 


32 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


noting the points at which — if the story were to be 
regarded as a play—changes in scene would occur, 
either because of lapse of time or because of the ne¬ 
cessity for a new stage setting. He will thus have 
distinguished the incidents of which the story is com¬ 
posed. He will then note the transitional materials 
which the writer may have used to bind these inci¬ 
dents together and to show their relation to each 
other. The student should then proceed to a study of 
the story with the purpose of seeing just what work 
each incident does in relation to the purpose of the 
story as a whole, and of seeking reasons for the choice 
of the incidents which are presented and the rejection 
of others which might have been used. He should try 
to see the reasons for the order in which the incidents 
have been arranged. 

The student will discover an occasional story which 
consists of but a single incident. He will find others 
in which so many very brief incidents are presented 
that this method of study has little value. For a ma¬ 
jority of stories, however, the analysis of incidents will 
prove rewarding. The student may find it profitable 
to set down in regard to each story, in parallel columns, 
first the dramatic content — a summary of the actual 
happenings — of each incident, and then beside this a 
statement of the work done by the incident in relation 
to the story as a whole. In this study he will discover 
the ways employed by writers for arousing and main¬ 
taining the interest of the reader in characters and 
situations, and he may gain a sense of rightful propor- 


PLANNING THE STORY 


33 


tions in treatment between the different parts of the 
story, and a recognition of advantageous ways of 
introducing characters and of indicating dramatic 
situations. 

The student is now ready to make story plans of his 
own. Choosing the story ideas previously arrived at 
which seem best suited to his needs, he may first make 
for each a very general tentative synopsis of major dra¬ 
matic incidents through which the story may be pre¬ 
sented, and then a fuller scenario indicating the sub¬ 
stance of each of these incidents in some detail, and 
the transitional material likely to be required. As he 
does this, he may seek to apply certain principles which 
he has discovered in his analysis of other stories and 
his reflection upon them — even though he recognizes 
that they are by no means invariable rules. He may 
have noted, for example, that in most short stories the 
first major dramatic incident presents both the central 
character and the central dramatic situation of the 
story; that successive incidents develop that situation, 
amplifying the conflicting forces within or without the 
character; until a point of decision — crisis or climax 
—is reached, whereupon the story ends rather promptly. 
He may seek to adapt his material, in general ways, to 
this structure. He will remember, however, that no 
two stories should be told in quite the same way; that 
no law exists for the writer save that of justice to his 
own material and his own vision; and that the ultimate 
measure of strength in the student is his capacity to 
draw to his own use all that is helpful in theory and 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


34 

principle without sacrificing whatever may be gen¬ 
uinely original in himself. 

Rather early in the work of planning a story of his 
own the student may become aware of the problem of 
point of view, or angle of narration. Granted a given 
sequence of events, it is necessary to decide what re¬ 
lation to these events will be assumed by the writer in 
presenting them to the reader. The events may be 
\ narrated in the first person, either by one of the char¬ 
acters of the story or by an observer. This method 
has a quality of immediacy, an effect of intimate con¬ 
tact between narrator and reader, and hence is likely 
to make for credibility. For this reason it is often 
employed for mystery stories, for stories of the super¬ 
natural, and for others in which credence may be hard 
to gain. A better method for most stories in which 
the primary interest lies in character is the third per son t 
in which the events are presented through the con¬ 
sciousness of one of the characters of the story and we 
are told what he experiences, sees and does and feels, 
not as though he himself were speaking but with the 
same degree of intimacy and completeness. This method 
may result in very full participation on the reader’s 
part in the experience of the chosen character. A story 
which includes several characters of approximately 
equal importance, or one which covers a long period 
of time, may call for the omniscient point of view, in 
which the author passes at will from the thoughts of 
one character to those of another, and narrates events 
which are occurring in different places at the same time, 


PLANNING THE STORY 


35 


or compresses many events into brief general state¬ 
ments, or comments on and interprets the actions or 
attitudes of the characters. The student can best as¬ 
certain the effect of each of these methods, and infer 
the reasons for choice of any one of them, by study of a 
number of good stories with reference to this matter 
of point of view. 

With the matter of point of view settled — the 
method of attack upon the material — the student may 
proceed with his outlining until he has before him, in 
tangible form, the sequence of events of which his 
story is to consist, from beginning to end. 

This plan may now be studied with a view to its 
improvement. It must be remembered that the suc¬ 
cess or failure of our story will depend, in the last 
analysis, upon the adequacy with which it transfers 
experience to the reader. This means, since the short 
story is short, that the chance of success lies in the 
direction of credibility, simplicity, and unity; for the 
experience which is improbable, highly complicated, 
or widely extensive or varied, lays upon the short 
story form a burden too great for it to bear, at least 
in the hands of most amateurs. The greatest service 
which the plan can render to the writer is the chance 
it affords for the recognition and correction of elements 
which would weaken the story. 

The matter of credibility in a short story is one 
which it is often hard for the writer to judge for him¬ 
self, and which depends so largely upon details that 
it can seldom be accurately predicted by others while 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


36 

a story is in its outline form. What seems highly 
improbable in the plan may attain full credibility in 
the finished manuscript. Nevertheless, an examina¬ 
tion of the plan with the question of credibility in 
mind will at least afford an index to the portions of the 
narrative in which conviction is likely to be most 
difficult of attainment; and will indicate oftentimes a 
rearrangement of incidents or the introduction of new 
material. 

Turning now to the matter of simplicity, we may 
profitably examine our plan with certain specific ques¬ 
tions in mind. It is true that some famous stories 
consist of single incidents — since the narrative is con¬ 
tinuous, without interruption by lapse of time or change 
of scene, from beginning to end — and that other excel¬ 
lent stories are composed of a very large number of 
incidents connected by generalized narration. But 
most typical short stories are composed of from five 
to ten incidents which are more or less closely con¬ 
nected in time and place. The student may well con¬ 
sider critically his own plan with this fact in view, seek¬ 
ing to eliminate unnecessary incidents, to combine those 
which may duplicate each other in their contribution 
to the story, and to provide for the possibility of simple 
and effective transitions between the incidents. Some¬ 
times the student will find that he has laid upon his 
story an unnecessarily heavy burden in the matter of 
settings. He should seek to avoid changes in the phys¬ 
ical background of his story unless these are actually 
necessary or helpful. Oftentimes it will be found that 


PLANNING THE STORY 


37 


two incidents originally thought of as occurring in dif¬ 
ferent places may as well have a common background, 
while other incidents may be dispensed with entirely 
in the interest of simplicity. 

The characters of the story, too, may be scrutinized 
while it is still in the tentative outline form, with a 
view to the ideal of simplicity. We may ask whether 
any characters are superfluous — whether we have 
assumed any unnecessary and unfruitful obligations 
of realization of people for the reader—and whether 
the whole natures of our characters and all elements 
in their relations are clearly established in our own 
minds. 

The examination of the characters as they figure 
in a story plan naturally leads to the last of our three 
tests, that of unity. Here it is very foolish to be 
dogmatic. There are stories of great power and beauty 
which resist the application of any briefly stated doc¬ 
trine of unity; and I have already made clear my 
distrust of rules and formulae in this whole matter 
of creative writing. Yet it may be safely said, with 
the foregoing qualification, that most short stories are 
characterized by a high degree of unity in the ex¬ 
perience which they present, and that the student 
should test his story plans most carefully for this 
quality. 

The unified impression given by most short stories 
is due to the fact that they are concerned primarily 
with one character, or with one common experience of 
several characters. The student must ask himself: 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


38 

What experience do I want to transfer? With what 
character am I most concerned ? Whose story is this ? 
When these questions have been answered, the plan 
should be tested incident by incident with reference to 
the centrality of character or effect thus decided upon. 
Often the student will find that he has let his interest 
shift from one character to another somewhere in the 
sequence of events, or that he has included characters 
or incidents which contradict and nullify the effect 
he desires. In some stories such shifts or contradic¬ 
tions are unavoidable, even desirable. But for his 
first story the student should prepare a plan which is 
dominated by a single character or a single highly 
unified experience. He should recast or revise until 
this unity is attained. And if he finds a plan which is 
not amenable to such revision, he should discard it 
or postpone its development. 

In concluding this discussion it may be well to 
note that no amount of surgery, osteopathy, or chiro¬ 
practic applied to a story plan will correct the unfortu¬ 
nate results of the absence of a valid idea to begih 
with. That “fraction of experience’ 7 mentioned in 
Chapter III is all-essential; and by this “experi¬ 
ence ” is meant something emotionally perceived with 
no small degree of acuteness. To write a story one 
must first live the story, imaginatively if not actually. 
He must be able to enter into this fragment of the 
great sum of human experience, and make it authen¬ 
tic in his own life. Rules and methods of procedure 
are at best but secondary; the capacity to see, to feel, 


PLANNING THE STORY 


39 


to understand — and the thirst to make others see, 
feel, and understand — these are the first essentials. 
Let the student lack these, and volumes on technique 
will avail him little or nothing; let him possess these, 
and the rest will be added unto him. 


CHAPTER V 


CHARACTERIZATION 

A theme chosen and a plan perfected, the student 
faces the problem of actually writing down what he 
has to say. In the main, what he writes will be an 
attempt to make his reader see, know, and understand 
people — in other words, an effort toward charac¬ 
terization. 

To make people live through words seems to me the 
most interesting undertaking in the world, and one 
of the most difficult. As he approaches this problem, 
the student will do well to consider the process by 
which impressions of people are formed in life, as a 
means of discovering the tools which are at his com¬ 
mand. Let us suppose that I am a resident of a small 
midwestern town, and that a young physician comes 
there to take up his practice. Possibly first of all I 
shall get a glimpse of the newcomer on the street or 
in the drugstore, and his personal appearance will 
give me a preliminary and possibly vivid, but not 
necessarily accurate, impression of his personality. 
I may talk with the man, or listen to his conversation 
with others, and my first impression will be immedi¬ 
ately amplified, corrected, or heightened, as I listen 
to his voice, note his words and idioms, and perhaps 

40 


CHARACTERIZATION 


4i 

gain some insight into his interests and opinions. Very 
soon my growing impression of the man will be af¬ 
fected by the opinions of others, expressed directly 
or indirectly. Later, I may visit his office or his home, 
and these places which are in some sense an ex¬ 
pression of himself will help to characterize him for 
me. Finally, and in the course perhaps of extended 
acquaintance, my impression of his character will be 
stabilized through what the man does — through his 
conduct, his actions. 

If, now, we summarize these steps, we shall discover 
that in the ordinary relations of men, impressions of 
character are formed through personal appearance, 
conversation, the impressions of others, the appear¬ 
ance of places intimately associated with the person 
in question, and action. Translating this into terms 
of the writer’s craft, we may give our reader an im¬ 
pression of character through description, conversa¬ 
tion, the attitude of others, place description, or action. 

To these methods we may add two more, which are 
very necessary parts of our equipment, but which 
have less relation to the ordinary course of experience. 
The first of these is exposition. In endeavoring to 
make the reader aware that John Smith is an honest, 
likable, industrious fellow, we may simply say so in 
so many words, instead of presenting John Smith by 
description, conversation, and action in such a way as 
to make the reader realize that he possesses these 
qualities. Further, it is the writer’s privilege to enter 
the mind of John Smith, telling the reader what is 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


42 

there within as well as what is externally evident. 
This revelation of thoughts and motives may be termed 
introspection. 

Each of the seven methods listed above may well 
be considered separately with reference to its limita¬ 
tions and possibilities. 

Exposition 

The simple statement of character in expository 
terms, without resort to the more concrete methods 
of conversation, action, etc., is often employed in the 
short story, particularly in the case of minor charac¬ 
ters who play essential parts in the plan but whom 
it is not necessary for the reader to know well or to 
understand. The advantage of the method is its 
► brevity, its economy. In a few words the reader gains 
an impression which it would take much longer to 
convey through conversation or any other concrete 
method. Hence exposition is adapted to the particular 
needs of the short story, and its use is much more 
often justified in this form than in the novel. The 
fundamental defect of the method is its lack of vivid¬ 
ness, which frequently results in failure to convince. 
When the writer places before us the appearance of a 
person, or his conversation or actions, permitting us 
to form our own estimates of character from the data 
offered, the experience is analogous to that of real life, 
and our impressions have corresponding vividness 
and veracity. But if he asks us to take his word for 


CHARACTERIZATION 


43 

it that John Smith is honest, or that Jane Smith is 
lazy, we may acquiesce, but we are not interested or 
impressed. The method should be used sparingly, 
then, especially in the case of the major characters 
of a story. Its chief usefulness lies in the ease with 
which one may convey in this way information re¬ 
garding the past lives of his characters — information 
which could be conveyed by no other means save 
conversation or introspection, and which would seem 
forced and unnatural if so presented. 

Description 

Personal description is a craft in itself, and should 
be practiced separately by the beginner by putting 
into his notebook descriptions of people he meets and 
sees — at least one every day. Some days may give 
him a dozen. In this practice work, the student should 
not aim at complete description. He should remem¬ 
ber that in forming an image of a person, the reader 
is able to take much for granted. It is the writer’s 
business to supply the particularizing, the individualiz¬ 
ing details, and to express these in words so specific, 
so vivid, that they cannot fail to be seen distinctly. 
The notebook entries should be brief, then, composed 
of bold, attention-catching details, phrased as con¬ 
cretely as possible. 

In choosing subjects for practice in personal de¬ 
scription, however, the student should not choose by 
preference the exceptional, the abnormal or extraor- 


44 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


dinary. Rather he should try to find the significant 
and individualizing details in the appearance of 
ordinary, everyday people. The notebook should not 
be a gallery of tramps, newsboys, and prostitutes; it 
should include a few bankers, cooks, grocers, laundry- 
men, even teachers and Sunday school superintendents. 

Probably the first important consideration in re¬ 
lation to the technique of personal description is 
order. The earliest introduction of a character should 
give general suggestion of age, sex, and stature, to¬ 
gether with one or two of such specific details as would 
normally be noted at first glance. Other specific 
details should be given later, in connection with con¬ 
versation and action. 

The student should remember that lighting is an 
integral part of every personal description. A face 
may be seen without any setting whatsoever — though 
usually place description enters more or less into the 
process of making a reader see a person. But be¬ 
cause of a perhaps unreasonable law of optics one 
cannot see a face except by some specific and de¬ 
terminable light. Practice in personal description 
should, therefore, include some reference to lighting: 
noon glare on the pavement, the steady flow of soft 
light in a library reading room, the flare of a match. 

As the young writer studies personal description 
in short stories he approves, he will find that de¬ 
scriptive details should be distributed, not massed. 
The natural impulse of many beginners is to reason 
in this fashion: I have John Smith to characterize 


CHARACTERIZATION 


45 

for my reader; very well, first I shall describe John 
Smith, and then I shall let him talk and work. The 
defect of this method is twofold. In the first place, 
if very many details of personal appearance are given 
at once, no matter how carefully they are arranged 
or how vividly phrased, the reader is unable to relate 
them properly and construct a vivid image. Further, 
in the conversation and action which follow such a 
massed description, the reader is likely to forget the 
appearance of the person who is talking and working. 
The better way is to give only two or three vivid 
details when first introducing a character, and to dis- * 
tribute others through conversation and action, as 
well as to reiterate the details which are most impor¬ 
tant. The aim should be, not merely to convey to the 
reader what John Smith says or does, but to make 
the reader see John Smith as he says and does these 
things. 

Conversation 

Most students find conversation very hard to write. 
For such students, and indeed for all of us, practice 
in pure dialogue is often beneficial. The aim should 
be, in the first exercises of this kind, not to convey 
any profound or significant facts of character or situa¬ 
tion, but simply to attain naturalness and vitality 
in the choice of words and in the phrasing. As a 
means to this end, the literal transcription in the 
notebook of words, phrases, and scraps of conversa- 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


46 

tion should be a part of the daily work of the serious 
student. Many times I have had a desire to intro¬ 
duce into a story the conversation of a specific char¬ 
acter, or persons of a given racial or economic 
background, only to find that I had nothing to put into 
their mouths but the ideas I wanted them to convey 
— no specific words or idioms which I knew they 
could and would use. This lack is the bane of much 
“ literary ” conversation. Characters either talk in a 
stilted, bookish fashion, or they speak in some stereo¬ 
typed argot or “ dialect ” drawn primarily from read¬ 
ing rather than from life. 

The point of the matter is simply the reopening of 
the consideration with which this little book began: 
the fact that most of us live insulated, unresponsive 
lives, that most of our impressions of people and 
places are second-hand, derived from books rather 
than from direct observation. 

The study of conversation opens several interest¬ 
ing problems which can be little more than suggested 
here. At the outset the student of conversation will 
be confronted by the necessity of deciding to what 
extent he will endeavor to reproduce, with phonetic 
literalness, the speech of his characters. He will 
realize, if he considers the matter, that very few if 
any of his characters speak consistent dictionary 
English — if, indeed, there is such a thing. As a 
matter of fact we all speak dialects — dialects of 
regional and local environment, dialects of racial in¬ 
heritance, dialects of occupation and recreations. To 


CHARACTERIZATION 


47 

me, born and bred in southwestern Iowa, “ hog ” is 
pronounced “ hawg,” and “ dog ” “ dawg.” Is the 
writer to spell the words so when he reproduces my 
conversation? A friend of mine is a teacher of short¬ 
hand in Pittsburgh. She was so distressed by the 
unwillingness of her students to acknowledge the ex¬ 
istence of the vowel sound which she found in 
“ caught,” “ taught,” and so forth, that she appealed 
to a teacher of English literature in the same high 
school: “ Won't you come in and tell my students 
how to pronounce c-a-u-g-h-t? They won’t believe 
me.” 

“ Certainly,” said the English teacher; and to the 
class — “ c-a-u-g-h-t is pronounced cot” 

The trouble was that my friend is from Kentucky, 
while the English teacher was a native Pittsburgher. 

Again there are not only pronunciations, but words 
which are regional, and even purely local. In a small 
town in which I once taught, familiar and frequent use 
was made of a word which I have never encountered 
elsewhere and have sought in vain in dictionaries: 
“ snivie,” meaning a small object, tool, or appliance, 
as a wrench, a pencil, the cap of a fountain pen, etc. 

For the student who becomes interested in this field 
there is one best book: The American Language , 
by H. L. Mencken — a most fascinating and stimu¬ 
lating work, and a study in contemporary philology of 
astonishing thoroughness and usefulness. 

As the student examines the work of modern short 
story writers, he will find that the best practice seems 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


48 

to lie in the direction of a refusal to attempt wholly 
literal reproduction of any person’s diction; partly 
because it is impossible in the case of any save the 
most literate people, and partly because, if it were pos¬ 
sible, the result would be so difficult to read as to 
destroy interest for all save the scientist. The better 
way is to suggest dialect by a few especially striking, 
vivid, and racy dialect words, using these consistently, 
and for the rest to keep to ordinary word forms and 
spellings — though characteristic idioms, or patterns 
and phrasings of words, should be sought. It is in the 
acquirement and retention of these all-important words 
and idioms that the notebook will be of service. 

The commonest defect of the writing of conversa¬ 
tion by beginners is the occurrence of long speeches. 
As a matter of fact, observation will show that com¬ 
paratively few persons talk habitually in long or 
complicated sentences; nor, in ordinary conversation, 
are speeches of more than one sentence at all com¬ 
mon. While it is not the writer’s purpose to achieve 
phonographic literalness in conversation, it should be 
his aim to preserve the vitality and informality which 
result from comparatively brief and simple speeches. 

The beginner should also be on his guard against 
the occurrence of solid blocks of conversation un¬ 
broken by description and action, and against mo¬ 
notony in indicating the speaker: “ said Mr. Brown,” 
“ said Mrs. Brown,” “ replied Mr. Brown,” “ replied 
Mrs. Brown.” When only two speakers are engaged 
in a conversation, the speaker needs to be indicated 


CHARACTERIZATION 


49 

only rarely. The student should make it a rule never 
to use “ said Mrs. Brown ” when it is not necessary 
to indicate the speaker, or when by some other means, 
as a bit of description or action, he can avoid the 
obvious phrase. The best way to master this detail 
is by study of the methods of good writers, and by 
experiment with isolated blocks of conversation mixed 
with description and action. 

Attitude of Others 

Characterization by showing the attitude of others 
may be either specific or general. In the first case, 
the writer reveals a person by telling what other 
persons say to him or about him, or think about him. 
Thus in a conversation between a father and a child, 
the father may be as much characterized by what the 
child says to him as by his own replies; or a conversa¬ 
tion between the child and his mother may characterize 
the father during the latter’s absence. 

In the second case the writer states in expository 
fashion the attitude toward the character of his family, 
his friends, or his community. The author may write 
of a character in some such fashion as this: “ Job 
Kern had few friends in the village; the old druggist 
with whom he discussed geology — the harness-maker 
with whom he played chess—no one else. Most 
people looked upon Job Kern as ‘ odd,’ and perhaps 
malicious.” 

In either form, characterization by showing the 
attitude of others is often of immense importance in 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


50 

revealing the emotional and spiritual background and 
environment of a character. 

Place Description 

Since place description is to be discussed fully in 
the next chapter under the title “setting,” it will not 
be treated here beyond noting what is apparent to any 
observant person: that a doctor’s office is in some 
measure an expression of his personality, as is a 
kitchen an expression of the housewife, or a farm¬ 
yard the expression of the farmer. Hence place de¬ 
scription often has large and definite usefulness in the 
revelation of character. 

Action 

Of all the methods of characterization, the most 
powerful is action. This is true whether we use the 
term in the generalized sense of habitual conduct, or 
confine it to the narrower meaning of what a person 
does at a given moment. The presentation of habitual 
_ or generalized action is usually of high value in the 
preliminary characterization of important persons in 
the story. By telling us how a farmer habitually cares 
for his stock, what a preacher habitually does in his 
forenoons, the writer prepares for the more specific 
presentation of character later on. 

Specific action is capable of carrying a heavier emo¬ 
tional load than any other type of narration. This 
may be a consequence of the fact that Americans (at 


CHARACTERIZATION 


5i 

least those I know) seldom express their more pro¬ 
found emotions in words. They are likely rather to 
look out the window, to whittle, or to pick up a 
newspaper. Later on, if at all, comes speech. At 
the crisis of a story, then, when the most intimate and 
final revelation of character is to be made, that writer 
is most successful who learns to place his chief de¬ 
pendence on action, rather than on conversation or 
introspection. 

Introspection 

Introspection, or the statement of what a character 
thinks and feels as a method of revealing that person, 
is one of the most important and interesting methods 
of characterization. It has been increasingly em¬ 
ployed by the more important writers of recent years, 
until we have, finally, some stories which are devoid 
of any other method of presenting character: we 
have no description, no conversation, no action — 
merely a succession of mental states — thoughts, 
feelings, impulses — through which we come to know 
the person in question. As ordinarily employed, in¬ 
trospection enables the writer to supplement events 
by presenting the accompanying emotional and in¬ 
tellectual processes — for example, to parallel a speech 
with an explanation of what the speaker really thinks, 
or of what his hearer thinks or feels. Introspection 
is used also to present to the reader those memories, 
plans, aspirations, and general emotional experiences 


52 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


of the characters which are not expressed or expres¬ 
sible in words or actions. 

The introduction of this method involves the cross¬ 
ing of a boundary — from objective narration to sub¬ 
jective narration. To write objectively is to write 
of people wholly as objects observed, presenting 
only what is externally apparent — their appearance, 
their conversation, their gestures and actions, the 
things with which they have surrounded themselves 
— and thereby to enable the reader to know these 
people; inferring, as in real life, their feelings and 
motives from what is observed. This is the method of 
the dramatist, of course, who cannot tell us what his 
characters think except by their words and actions. 
But in subjective narration the character is less a per¬ 
son acting than a person thinking , and we know him 
primarily through the revelation of what is hidden 
from ordinary observation. 

I must admit a fondness for the purely objective 
method. The emphasis laid by modern psychology 
upon the importance of impulses and experiences 
not expressed clearly, if at all, in objective ways, 
has probably made this method inadequate for the 
demands of the modern novel; but I believe that 
great things can be done in the field of the short story 
with purely objective methods. However this may 
be, it seems that most students will do best to hold 
pretty closely to the objective in their first attempts 
at story writing. Let the student learn to make his 
characters reveal themselves through appearance, 


CHARACTERIZATION 


53 


conversation, and action, with the help of place de¬ 
scription, the attitude of others, and occasional ex¬ 
position. Then let him add the insight into their 
mental processes which introspection permits. To 
some writers, of course, this advice is foolish; in¬ 
terested in how minds work, and why they work as 
they do, they cannot but choose the method which 
reflects their interest. And for certain characters and 
situations, also, the introspective method is necessary. 
But the beginner will do well to use it cautiously. 

So far as the actual writing of introspection is con¬ 
cerned, the best suggestions may be gained by studying 
such writers as D. H. Lawrence, Sherwood Anderson, 
Waldo Frank, and James Joyce. It will be noted 
that introspection may be rendered concrete as ex¬ 
perience by the inclusion in it of vivid description 
of objects and events observed by the subject of the 
introspection. Unless so vitalized it should never ap¬ 
pear in large blocks, but rather as parenthetical com¬ 
ments, glimpses of insight, in the midst of conversation 
and action. 

Interpretation 

Before leaving the subject of the presentation of 
character, it is necessary to refer to the practice of 
explaining to the reader what is implied in a character 
by a given detail, speech, or act. This is called inter¬ 
pretation. It amounts to the attachment of an ex¬ 
planatory tag to a detail which has been introduced, 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


54 

and is at once an insult to the reader’s intelligence 
and an inhibition to his attention. This is not to 
be confused with explanation of technical matters, 
as of the details of a process with which the reader 
cannot be assumed to be familiar. Such explanation 
is occasionally necessary, though in the short story 
such occasions of necessity should be avoided. The 
comment which calls the reader’s attention to the fact 
that clear blue eyes suggest honesty, or that a certain 
speech reveals the broadmindedness of the speaker, 
should never be resorted to. If the detail is not strong 
enough to convey its own significance, it should be 
either strengthened or discarded. If it is strong 
enough, the interpretative comment is worse than 
superfluous. 

In summing up I wish to say one thing more about 
this matter of characterization. I am fearful of laying 
too much stress upon methods and too little stress 
upon spirit. It seems to me that if a student can gain 
the attitude which results in thorough-going, sym¬ 
pathetic characterization, he has won the greatest 
victory in his effort for development in short story 
writing. If he has attained the spirit of dwelling 
upon all his characters, with genuine loving attention, 
seeking earnestly to know and understand; and if, 
working in this spirit, he does attain some genuine 
sense of character in the particular case and situa¬ 
tion with which he is dealing, I have confidence that 
methods and means for putting down what he has to 


CHARACTERIZATION 


55 


say will not be hard to find. I think it is worth while 
to study methods, especially in the writings of others, 
and I think it is worth while to go through specific 
exercises in characterization by conversation, by 
action, and the like. On the other hand, entire 
dependence on method, as such, can never enable 
anyone to characterize successfully. Effective char¬ 
acterization will come only from knowing people, 
wanting to know people, and loving and studying 
people. In the last analysis the problem resolves it¬ 
self into the question, “Are you willing and able to 
share the life of your character? ” 


CHAPTER VI 


SETTING 

What I have to say about setting as an element in 
short story writing had perhaps better be taken with 
a grain of salt; for I am aware of a personal pre¬ 
dilection for stories which are rich in descriptive 
elements, particularly in place description. Perhaps, 
therefore, I am inclined to overemphasize the im¬ 
portance of these elements. 

I am prepared to defend my preference, however, 
on several grounds. In the first place, I submit that, 
in the last analysis, there is only one theme for all 
serious fiction: the attempt of man to make the place 
on the planet that he desires for himself; and I sub¬ 
mit, further, that in most presentations of this struggle 
the planet gets rather less than its share of attention. 
More seriously: human experience is always defi¬ 
nitely related to physical environment, is actually 
influenced or determined by it. In transferring the 
experience, then, fullness of reality can be attained 
only by adequate inclusion of that physical environ¬ 
ment. 

In presenting the subject of setting to the student of 
the short story, I wish first to distinguish between what 
may be called spiritual or emotional setting, which is 
56 


SETTING 


57 

supplied in reference to a given character by the 
characterization of others and the presentation of their 
attitude; and physical or material setting, which con¬ 
sists of description of nature and of rooms, houses, 
streets, fields, gardens, the whole objective back¬ 
ground of experience. Setting of this first kind (which 
has been discussed briefly in the preceding chapter) 
is especially interesting to many modern writers. It 
plays a very large part in such fine modern novels as 
Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel and Ruth 
Suckow’s Odyssey of a Nice Girl. The more detailed 
treatment of external setting is brilliantly exemplified in 
some of the work of Hardy, Conrad, and Willa Cather. 

This physical or objective background is necessary, 
however, to some extent, in every short story. The 
simplest and commonest necessity for it arises from 
the exigencies of situation and event. The reader 
must understand that there are doors right and left. 
He must understand that the action is taking place in 
a barn, a barroom, or a burying-ground. He has to 
know something about the physical facts of the case. 
Description in an elementary form, then, enters into 
every story. 

More important is setting as a means of revealing 
character. We have already noted how an office, a 
kitchen, or a farmyard, may help us to know the 
person of whom it is an expression. Further use may 
be made of setting in relation to characterization by 
describing places which are not the expression of 
character, but rather the factors which have deter- 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


58 

mined it: a description of a bleak, unlovely home may 
help us to understand the emotionally starved girl 
who comes from it. Description of a countryside will 
help us to understand anyone who lives there. Still 
further and more important, characterization is ac¬ 
complished by describing a place or object and then 
revealing, through introspection, conversation, or 
action, the response of a person to it. This use of 
setting is very common and helpful. 

Setting is often used in the endeavor to establish a 
given mood, either of a character in the narrative or 
on the part of the reader himself. Examples of such 
“ mood descriptions ” abound in the work of almost 
all great writers of fiction. The beginner should ven¬ 
ture on them cautiously. If he is not careful he will 
have the skies weeping with every misfortune of his 
heroine, the birds carolling joyously whenever a con¬ 
finement is terminated satisfactorily: the pathetic 
fallacy at its worst. In spite of the example of some 
very popular makers of fiction, this is not a judicious 
investment of place details. The beginner will do best 
to leave mood descriptions to a later date, and to use 
setting only for the purposes described above. 

In the work of place description, it will be well to 
remember much of what has previously been said 
about description of persons. Details should not be 
massed, but so far as possible distributed through the 
action and conversation related to a given place. One 
must be sure, of course, to give the general and neces¬ 
sary outlines of a place at the outset, since in forming 


SETTING 


59 

an image of a setting the reader has no general concept, 
as in the case of the description of a person, to guide 
him. Diction is of supreme importance; and the 
young writer, as he walks along a street or across a 
field, as he enters a living room or restaurant or 
church, should note specific colors, shapes, textures, 
and seek the exact words to convey his impressions. 
Usually he will be astonished by the inadequacy of 
his vocabulary. Certainly, as long as one can see he 
will find new impressions which demand new searches 
for the right word. Vivid bits of place description, 
lists of suggestive adjectives, adverbs, and, especially, 
verbs — drawn both from observation and from read¬ 
ing — should form a part of every student’s notebook. 
The verbs are most important. Let the student 
analyze an especially vigorous, vivid, and condensed 
place description, and he will find, in all probability, 
that verbs are responsible for most of its effectiveness. 
He should try to work out for himself the possibility 
of letting a single verb do the work of half a dozen 
other words. 

Another matter which deserves the special attention 
of the student is the part played by other senses than 
that of sight in our impressions of places. If you 
analyze your experience of a given place you will 
probably find that the sense of hearing makes an 
important contribution, and that smell and even taste 
enter to some extent. Less obvious but sometimes 
very important are the kinetic or muscular sensations 
— of the shapes, masses, weights of buildings, hills, 


6 o 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


or trees; and tactual sensations of temperature, 
moisture, surfaces, and textures. The part played by 
appeals to these other senses in effective place de¬ 
scription will be apparent as the student analyzes the 
more vivid descriptions which he encounters in his 
reading. A suggestion of the smell of growing corn 
on a still July night will take a native of the corn belt 
in imagination to the edge of the field much more 
surely than any appeal to the sense of sight or hearing, 
important though these are. The experience of walk¬ 
ing through a tunnel could by no means be adequately 
conveyed by visual details alone. The difficulty of 
finding words for these elements in the experience of a 
place is matched by the effectiveness of the details 
when the right words are found. The beginner will 
find his world growing, and his language with it, as he 
toils to put into his notebook the reality of day-by¬ 
day experience. 

Sometimes, to be sure, setting rises above the place 
previously assigned it, to become an important, even 
a dominating, force in the story. The familiar and 
supreme example of this is The Return of the Native, 
in which the Heath not merely affords background, 
but determines conduct and destiny — is, in short, 
the chief character of the novel. Another profoundly 
interesting example is Conrad’s “ Heart of Darkness” , 
in which the jungle — seldom extensively described, the 
impression of it conveyed rather by hint, by inference, 
and by occasional vivid glimpses — is nevertheless 
the overpowering and determining force of the tale. 


SETTING 


61 


To the student who is skeptical as to the importance 
of knowing the setting of which one undertakes to 
write, I recommend a comparison of “ Heart of Dark¬ 
ness ” with Katherine Fullerton Gerould’s “ Vain 
Oblations.” Mrs. Gerould’s vastly over-rated story 
has as its theme an idea as dramatic in its possibilities 
as that of “ Heart of Darkness ” (though I deny the 
essential truth of this theme). The failure of “ Vain 
Oblations ” to carry conviction is due almost entirely 
to its destitution of effective treatment of setting. 
Mrs. Gerould does not know what she is describing. 
But in “ Heart of Darkness ” there is never a mo¬ 
ment’s doubt that Conrad knows his setting and is 
master of its significance as a decisive force in human 
destiny. 

For a use of setting in this way, the writer must 
have a very active sense of place as such, and a con¬ 
viction of its importance in human affairs. To write 
such a story artificially, without a mastering sense 
of the thing which it attempts to convey, would be 
futile and absurd. But the writer who loves the forms 
and colors of earth and sky and sea, or the loom and 
thrust of buildings, the stretch of lighted pavements, 
the warmths and textures and surfaces of offices and 
cafes and of the rooms of dwellings, will do well to 
give his utmost effort to the presentation of these 
things, confident that whatever he has seen freshly 
and truly is significant and worthy of attentive 
portrayal. 


CHAPTER VII 


STYLE 

What I have to say about style is perhaps of 
slight moment, and certainly will meet with but limited 
acceptance. I remember a friendly argument in which 
I once engaged with a young woman whom I believe 
to be one of the foremost short story writers of 
America, in which she maintained with spirit that 
style as a thing in itself, and in any sense capable of 
consideration apart from content, does not now exist 
in American fiction, if indeed it has ever existed at all. 
I was not and am not unacquainted with the critical 
authorities for this view; yet I held and still hold 
that there is such a thing as style in itself, and that 
it is one of the legitimate concerns of the writer of 
short stories. 

To me, style is simply the auditory or sensory 
element in prose. Subtract from a given passage the 
ideas which it transfers, the information it contains, 
and what you have left is the impression on the senses 
of the words and their arrangement — a matter of 
vowel and consonant sounds and of the rhythm of 
syllables, with the inevitable emotional concomitants 
of these sounds and rhythms. In this sense, one 
listening to the intelligent reading aloud of a totally 

62 


STYLE 63 

unknown language will receive the impressions which 
go to make up style. Style is the music of prose. 

The decay of style in our day, its almost total ab¬ 
sence from the work of some of our most significant 
writers, is due in part to the discontinuance of the 
practice of reading aloud. The student of style must 
read aloud, and listen to others read, both good and 
bad prose. I can conceive of no more fitting atone¬ 
ment for Sinclair Lewis than to be compelled to listen 
to the reading aloud of the whole of Main Street. 

Of the elements of style suggested above, rhythm 
is the simpler, though sufficiently complicated. The 
rhythm of prose is in part a matter of sentence units, 
and in part a matter of units within the sentence. The 
effect of long, sonorous, carefully modulated sentences, 
of brisk, rapid, or explosive sentences, and of very 
short sentences, will be familiar to any reader pos¬ 
sessed of a fair sense of rhythm. Perhaps most ob¬ 
vious is the connection of short sentences with crises 
of action or emotion. But rhythm within the sentence 
is not quite so readily analyzed. Examine carefully 
the following sentence: “The crowd swept together 
like leaves of the aspen blown by the four winds into 
one heap.” 1 Read these words over and over aloud, 
and you will perceive that they fall naturally and in¬ 
deed inevitably into four groups, which we may call 
phrasal units, ending with “ together,” “ aspen,” 
“ winds,” and “ heap.” Further, each of those units 

1 From George Carver’s The Scarlet One, in Stories from The 
Midland. (See Appendix V.) 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


6 4 

will be seen to contain stressed and unstressed syl¬ 
lables: and, for most readers, the arrangement of these 
syllables in the four units will suggest a pattern. 
Perhaps this exercise will be sufficient to introduce the 
student to a field of investigation of the utmost in¬ 
terest and significance, as yet far from fully explored 
— that of prose rhythm. Study of the relation of the 
length, regularity, and structure of the phrasal units 
to the emotional content of the sentence, in the 
work of such writers as D. H. Lawrence, Sherwood 
Anderson, Joseph Hergesheimer, and James Branch 
Cabell, will reveal much to the attentive reader. 

The sounds of the individual syllables, compounded 
of the vowels and consonants of which they are com¬ 
posed, are equally important. Even the casual reader 
will agree that certain sounds have specific emotional 
suggestion, as, for example, the “ s ” sound, the short 
“ i ” sound of “ pin ” and “ itch,” and the long golden 
“ o ” sound. Hence it is fair to infer that every vowel 
or consonantal sound has an emotional value, usually 
so faint as to be incapable of isolation, but often 
apparent enough when the sound is reiterated and 
combined with others of like or contrasting value. 

The point to be noted is that prose, in this aspect, 
is simply a different handling of the materials of 
metrical poetry — with larger and freer patterns both 
in rhythm and in word-sound. The intermediate 
forms of Whitman and Sandburg are significant in 
this connection. 

Excellence in style, in short story writing, is almost 


STYLE 


65 

entirely a matter of emotional harmony of rhythm 
and word sound with meaning. The objective is 
adaptation of the sound element in the medium to the 
intellectual and emotional elements. The best narra¬ 
tive style is by no means that which is the most mel¬ 
lifluous or beautiful intrinsically, but that which is the 
most perfect as an auditory medium for the given 
emotional experience. This ideal is perhaps most 
nearly attained, among modern writers, by W. H. 
Hudson. A comment on Hudson’s style by John Gals¬ 
worthy, quoted in Clifford Smith’s foreword to Hud¬ 
son’s A Crystal Age , is worthy of special notice because 
of the light it throws on the whole problem: “As a 
stylist, Hudson has few, if any, living equals. To use 
words so true and simple that they oppose no obstacle 
to the flow of thought and feeling from mind to mind, 
and yet by juxtaposition of word sounds set up in the 
recipient continuing emotion or gratification — this is 
the essence of style; and Hudson’s writing has pre¬ 
eminently this double quality.” 

Perhaps I should note that most writers on the sub¬ 
ject of style give a wider meaning to the term than 
that indicated in the preceding paragraphs; and by my 
emphasis upon rhythm and word sound within the 
sentence I do not mean to deny the validity of other 
considerations. For example, the student may well 
give careful attention to the general pattern of the prose 
in the story as a whole — the attainment of emphasis 
^through changes in rhythm, the modulation of phrase, 
sentence, and paragraph to accompany and accentuate 


66 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


changes in emotion. Usually the whole matter of 
choice of words is considered also — the fitness of the 
vocabulary to the material to be presented. One of 
the most suggestive discussions of style which I have 
ever read — and of other problems of the writer as well 
— is to be found in Ford Madox Ford’s Joseph Con¬ 
rad: A Personal Remembrance (Little, Brown & Co.). 

Let us admit freely that self-conscious efforts at 
style are likely to be disastrous. What the writer 
should hope to do is to possess himself so fully of the 
sensory resources of his medium — make himself so 
keenly responsive to flow and color of words — that 
when he comes to write that which he feels deeply 
and truly he will achieve style without conscious effort. 
Revision in the interest of style should, I believe, 
usually be confined to reading aloud in the effort to 
exclude rough and inharmonious passages — recog¬ 
nizing, of course, that roughness in sound and rhythm 
may be of fundamental necessity for some material. 
Artificiality and preciosity are as odious to me as to 
any one. I never advise a student to take a bad story 
and “doctor up its style.” But I believe that the 
student who can learn to love words, the ebb and stress 
of their patterns and the minute beauties of their 
sounds, is likely in the end to tell his story better for 
this love, and is certain in the meantime to find not a 
little of the craftsman’s pleasure, both in his reading 
and his own work. 

Here, then, is the substance of my doctrine of style 
for the student of the short story: memorize the pas- 


STYLE 


67 

sages in Appendix V; study their phrasal structure, 
the vowel and consonant values of the words; seek 
other passages like these. And then remember that 
a whole story cannot be written in such a perfected 
style — that we must have degree and contrast as in 
other matters — and study the style of other portions 
of the stories from which these bits are taken. Finally, 
in your own writing forget in the hour of composition 
that there is such a thing as style. But never forget 
that words are alive and plastic, and that if you care 
enough for them they will make you master of strange 
and memorable beauties. 


CHAPTER VIII 


BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS 

Getting a story started often seems insuperably 
difficult. How shall I begin? what shall I put down 
first? how shall I cover the first sheet of paper? — 
these questions are likely to be puzzling. To the 
student who has never been conscious of such a diffi¬ 
culty I have nothing to say except that he is fortunate. 
He is hereby excused from reading the rest of the 
chapter. But to the fellow who agrees that the first 
page is the hardest — and he is by no means neces¬ 
sarily inferior in any way to the other — the rather 
mechanical analysis which follows may possibly be of 
interest. 

There are comparatively few ways of beginning 
a short story: by action, by conversation, by place 
or personal description, by introspection, by presenta¬ 
tion of general emotional environment, by exposition 
of character, by the enunciation of theme (of the ab¬ 
stract or general notion which the story is to illustrate), 
by the presentation of circumstances under which the 
story is told. 

Of these methods, one widely favored today is 
action. Mr. Fagin, in the book already mentioned, is 
authority for the statement that one editor calls the 
68 


BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS 69 

following sentence an ideal beginning: “ He went up 
to the attic and hung himself.” Stories must have 
“ punch ” in the first page, in the first line. They 
must arrest the reader’s attention. They must “ get 
across.” 

This is undeniably true if one is writing a story to 
sell to such editors as the one quoted above. It is 
not necessarily true if one is writing the story because 
he has something to say — because some phase of 
human experience has so engaged his attention as to 
impel him powerfully to its expression. Hence com¬ 
paratively few of the great short stories of the world 
begin with action, at least with action of any highly 
exciting kind. The only safe rule for the student 
is this: begin the story with action if that is the 
natural, inevitable way to begin it; but do not begin 
with action for any other reason. A story which has 
so little intrinsic interest as to necessitate the adoption 
of an artificial device to insure its being read had 
better not be written at all. 

All that has been said about action applies equally 
to conversation, which is often its equivalent in the 
modern story. 

Place and personal description are among the best 
ways of beginning stories. Such descriptions should 
be brief, vivid, and related to the principal characters 
or scenes of the story. It is nearly always a mistake 
to begin with a description of a minor character. 

Often a generalized description of the background 
of a story, or a similarly generalized exposition of 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


70 

character, is a good way of beginning. The student 
of Chehov will find most of his stories beginning in 
one of these ways. 

Introspection, if used to begin a story, must have 
a considerable descriptive content, since through the 
thought of a character we must at once begin to know 
the facts about him and the background of his life. 

The statement of the theme of a story at the outset 
is an old method, but it is seldom, for the modern 
writer, a good one. It has the advantage of linking 
up the narrative with general experience, and hence 
presumably with the individual experience of the 
reader. For this reason it is used by many modern 
writers as a device to secure favorable attention. 
Such use is not justified unless the theme is so obscure 
and complex as to require definition, or unless the 
story itself is so exceptional in its material as to re¬ 
quire some such special linking of the narrative with 
what the reader himself may have observed. 

The method of beginning a story by explaining the 
circumstances under which it is told is of course con¬ 
fined to first person narratives, and is exemplified in 
many of the stories of Kipling and Conrad. This ex¬ 
planation may take the form of the establishment of 
a narrative frame—of description, conversation, and 
action — for the story proper, as in Kipling’s “ My 
Lord the Elephant ” (and most of the Mulvaney 
stories); or it may constitute an explanation of the 
teller’s relation to the events to be narrated and the 
characters to be presented, as in the same author’s 


BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS 


7i 


“ The Finest Story in the World.” One or the other 
of these methods of beginning is usually advanta¬ 
geous, if not actually necessary, in a first person narra¬ 
tive. 

The student will find his most helpful exercise in 
this connection to be a study of the beginnings of short 
stories which he approves — especially of a large 
number of stories by one writer, as Chehov or Kath¬ 
erine Mansfield. He will note the occurrence of the 
several methods discussed above, with their combina¬ 
tions and modifications, and will soon be able to de¬ 
termine with reasonable assurance what will be the 
best beginning for a given story. 

So far as methods of ending a story are concerned, 
perhaps the less said the better. If the right ending 
does not grow inevitably out of the writer’s conception 
of the story itself, there is likely to be something 
so seriously wrong in the conception or presentation 
of character, or in the planning of events, that no 
patter about methods could be helpful. Most good 
stories dictate their own endings, not only in general 
outline of events but also in details. Sometimes, 
however, though very rarely, stories of the highest 
intrinsic merit seem to offer the possibility of two or 
more endings. Possibly a few comments and sug¬ 
gestions will help an occasional student. 

In the first place, strange as it may seem to the 
conscientious young writer, a sad ending is not always 
necessary. Most of us are prone in our first honest 
attempts at writing to interpret experience in terms 


72 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


of tragedy. But nevertheless it is true that a happy 
ending is not necessarily a bad ending. I assert this 
even though I am far from upholding the “ God’s 
in his heaven — all’s right with the world ” philosophy 
of life, and though I regard writers who do consistently 
uphold that philosophy, day in and day out, as either 
quacks or fools. There is tragedy in the world, un¬ 
relieved, savage, victorious. Also there is happiness 
the more precious that it is insecure, and faith that 
is not without reward. 

The only ending that is indefensible is an ending 
that is consciously modified for the pleasure of a 
prospective reader. 

As to the technique of “ getting out from under ” 
the story, I have but one suggestion: action. Most 
short stories should end sharply, poignantly. To carry 
the fullest emotional load, action alone is adequate. 
If you have ended a story with a speech or a de¬ 
scription and it somehow seems not quite right, try to 
substitute for it an action which sums up and expresses 
the situation. 

The general purport of this little chapter is clear 
enough without summary. I have tried to indicate 
the necessity of fidelity to what seems to the writer 
the essential truth of his material, and the importance 
of careful study of the methods actually employed by 
the masters. 


CODA 


“ And where do we go from here? ” Not, I hope it 
is apparent, to the typewriter, for the inditing of 
masterpieces, or indeed of anything else. If any one 
undertook the reading of this book under the impres¬ 
sion that it would teach him to write short stories, 
he is undoubtedly by this time convinced of a bad 
bargain. Possibly it will have helped some readers 
to see short story material, may even have given con¬ 
crete suggestions which will aid students in learning 
for themselves how to write. It could scarcely hope 
to do more. 

To the street, then, the store, the field, the subway; 
to construction camps and foundries; to homes and 
street-cars and court-rooms: to all the places where 
people live and work. Attentive and sympathetic ob¬ 
servation of others and of oneself; dispassionate analy¬ 
sis of impulse and motive; painstaking accumulation of 
detail and mastery of its presentation; projection of 
oneself into the hopes and fears, miseries and exalta¬ 
tions, of all manner of men: these are the require¬ 
ments of the writer. Without these, rules and formu¬ 
lae are barren; “ structure ” and “ plot ” and all the 
rest are ineffectual talismans. With these, few and 
simple means to effective telling of a story are enough. 

73 


74 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


I return, as you see, to my first proposition. If 
you want to write short stories primarily for money 
or “ fame ” or God knows what else, I wish you joy 
of it, civilly but not too earnestly. But if you want to 
write because people and places are alive to you, be¬ 
cause you have experience that demands expression, 
I promise that you will not be disappointed in the 
compensation which awaits your utmost effort. You 
may not immediately “ make ” the Cosmopolitan or 
the Red Book , or even the Atlantic Monthly; they will 
not be lacking who will tell you that I am doing all 
I can to keep you from it, and they may be right. But 
you will have a good time. You will discover that 
the world is a surprisingly interesting place and that 
there are in it a multitude of new things. 

It is perhaps unfortunate that our lives are not 
supremely important to any save ourselves; that by 
no stretch of imagination can we reasonably regard 
ourselves as capable of modifying in the least ap¬ 
preciable degree the enormous inertia of the race; 
and that our taking off is in the last analysis an in¬ 
supportable calamity to no survivor. But it is the 
converse of this truth that to us our lives, compound 
of swift days, are very precious. And art affords the 
only means yet ascertained whereby we may 
appreciably and certainly increase the richness of 
those days. 


APPENDIX I 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

This list of books is primarily an expression of personal 
interests and preferences. It is intended as suggestive rather 
than exhaustive. 

Historical 

Canby, Henry Seidel, The Short Story in English (Holt). 

O’Brien, Edward J., The Advance oj the American Short 
Story (Dodd, Mead). 

Pattee, Fred Lewis, The Development of the American 
Short Story (Harper). 

Anthologies 

Best Short Stories of 1915, etc., edited by Edward J. 
O’Brien (Dodd, Mead). 

O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories, series edited by 
Dr. Blanche Colton Williams (Doubleday, Doran). 

Short Stories of America, edited by Robert L. Ramsay 
(Houghton Mifflin). 

Stories of the City, edited by Henry Goodman and Bruce 
Carpenter (Ronald Press). 

Creating the Short Story, edited by Henry Goodman 
(Harcourt, Brace). 

A Book of Modern Short Stories, edited by Dorothy 
Brewster (Macmillan). 


75 


76 SHORT STORY WRITING 


Canadian Short Stories , edited by 
(Macmillan). 

Transition Stories (McKee). 

Stories from the Dial (Dial Press). 


Raymond 


% 


Knister 


Individual Writers 


(For other books by each writer, see list of the 
publisher mentioned.) 

Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg , Ohio (Modem Library). 
Ivan Bunin, The Gentleman from San Francisco (Knopf). 
Willa Cather, Youth and the Bright Medusa (Knopf). 
Chehov, The Bishop and Other Stories , translated by 
Constance Garnett (Macmillan). 

Grace Stone Coates, Black Cherries (Knopf). 

Joseph Conrad, Youth and Other Stories (Doubleday, 
Doran). 

A. E. Coppard, The Black Dog and Other Stories (Knopf). 
Stephen, £rane, Men, Women and Boats (Modern Li¬ 
brary) . - 

Theodore Dreiser, Free and Other Stories (Modem 
Library). 

. Zona Gale, Yellow Gentians and Blue (Appleton). 

John Galsworthy, Caravan (Scribner). 

Hamlin Garland, Main Travelled Roads (Harper). 
Maxim Gorky, Chelkash (Knopf, Pocket Library). 
Thomas Hardy, Wessex Tales (Harper). 

Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women (Scribner). 

O. Henry, Whirligigs (Doubleday, Doran). 

Aldous Huxley, The Young Archimedes (Doubled^, 
Doran). 


APPENDIX 


77 

Sarah Orne Jewett, Tales of New England (Houghton 
Mifflin). 

James Joyce, Dubliners (Viking Press). 

Rudyard Kipling, The Day’s Work (Doubleday, Doran). 
Ring Lardner, The Love Nest (Scribner). 

Jack London, The Children of the Frost (Macmillan). 
Thomas Mann, Children and Fools (Knopf). 

Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party (Knopf). 

Ruth Suckow, Iowa Interiors (Knopf). 

Turgenev, Sportsman’s Sketches , translated by Constance 
Garnett (Macmillan). 

Mark Twain, The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg 
(Harper). 

Thyra Samter Winslow, Picture Frames (Knopf). 


APPENDIX II 


This appendix consists of a literal transcription of por¬ 
tions of the notebooks of some of my students, representing 
each of the several kinds of material suggested in 
Chapter II. Three of the place descriptions are from other 
sources. 

People 

They were extremely tall — both of them — and looked 
like a couple of crooked telephone poles when they danced. 

He had a wide, sudden grin, like the opening of a red 
cavern. 

There the twins lay, sound asleep in their little white 
slips, their arms and feet bare, and their hair curling in 
tiny dark ringlets on their foreheads and necks. 

A small woman, straight as an arrow, marched down the 
sidewalk in a faded, tight-fitting blue suit. A small black 
hat, set far back on her head, seemed to pull her head 
backward by the weight of a long, rusty black plume, 
twisted in the wind. 

Two young men in a Ford truck, just about to start from 
in front of a small white house. A heavy, white-mous¬ 
tached man in shirt sleeves swears vigorously, stumping 
back and forth. As the truck roars and rattles away he 

78 


APPENDIX 


79 

shouts, “You needn’t show your face around here again 
if you go! ” 

Overheard: “ she told me that at first she couldn’t get 
along without him, but now she thinks she can.” 

A morose, lanky, middle-aged man, wearing a winter 
cap with the ear-muffs down, leans over the back fence in 
the April sunshine and watches his spry spinster neighbor 
make garden. “ You know that man Louise married,” 
he says, “ that McMaster fellow? Well, they found him 
dead in bed this morning.” 

The neighbor straightens up suddenly. “ You don’t say! 
Well — he died about as he lived, I guess.” She goes on 
planting radish seed in a neat, straight drill. 

Places 

Two blocks east on the flats, past a fertilized lawn, wet, 
pungent, musty with the afternoon’s rain; past a vacant 
lot where crooked rows of late cabbage lean in their 
bedraggled flounces. 

A puff of wind shook the clematis vine at the corner of 
the low gray house, scattering the purple petals in a slow, 
fluttering shower. 

The black, angular tower of the gas reservoir framed in 
its network bits of velvety night sky, with a few dim stars. 

The hollow was full of cool green shadows, dark under 
the trees and bushes, and scattered in softened splotches on 
the yellow road. 


8 o 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


From a little bridge whose rail glistened in the moonlight, 
a long whitish road stretched straight north between level 
meadows. Near at hand a line of poplars, rustling and 
gleaming as they turned their leaves in the faint wind, 
covered the road with their vague shadow; but at length 
the trees ceased, and the pale line of the road lay open 
to the sky. For a long way between the fields the road 
ran, narrowing and brightening as it receded, until at the 
horizon it notched the skyline just below the full north 
star. 

I sat at my window looking out into the rainy night. 
Across the street the arc light jerked and chuckled, putting 
fidgety shadows up to the wet elm boughs. Outside the 
flickering circle of light, tree-tops wavered dimly; beyond 
them was darkness; not a star to break the obscurity; 
not a sound beside the rain patting down on the leaves in its 
endless monotone. Suddenly a jagged streak leaped across 
the sky, showing leaden cloud-masses twisting upon them¬ 
selves ; then — darkness. 

The rising night wind stirs the reeds along the marsh 
and wrinkles the dark pools where clouds holding the last 
streak of daylight in the sky are reflected faintly. The 
edge of the marsh melts into shadow. The rustling of 
the swamp-grass is the only sound. Suddenly out of the 
shadow comes the whirr of wings, and a wild duck rises. 
Black against the faint sky, steady, unswerving, he cuts 
the growing dusk, pushing back the nearing sky line until 
he is swallowed by the darkness. 


APPENDIX 


81 


Names For Stories 


Airy Nothings 
It’s All One 
Exert Yourself, Peter 
The Beauty 


Roots of Things 
For the Pianoforte 
A Day at Lucerne 
The Heathen 


Names For Characters 


Mr. Rooney 
Mel Adams 
Francis Kirkway 
A 1 Gentle 
George Stubb 
Neal Adamson 
Peel Cassidy 


Calla Burney 
Fay Strong 
Enid Ashton 
Grace Dowling 
Miss Pettit 
Carma Dusey 
Fern McElroy 


Bits of Phrasing from Projected Stories 

The last night of her buoyant, perplexed girlhood the 
cold disc of the moon watched. She took a run, then a 
leap along the deserted path, the dead leaves scurrying 
along behind her. 


Immemorial games of “ wink-um ” in decorous front 
parlors. 

The minister droned: “ For matrimony is an holy es¬ 
tate, instituted by God in the days of man’s innocency.” 

The mother sat motionless; her parted hair, just showing 
gray, was smooth, her dark eyes luminous. In sunlight 
from the window her jet beads flashed and darkened. 



82 SHORT STORY WRITING 

Green. . . . The painting of the house ten years before 
had meant his defiance of convention in a town where all 
houses that are not of brick or stone are white, or a modest 
gray, or more commonly, aged and paintless. 

They would always be alone in the big arid house, 
eating three meals a day in silence. 


Ideas for Stories: Themes and Plans 

A man working for his master’s degree in psychology 
sends out a lot of questions to be answered by persons who 
are “ the only child.” Through the story of one girl, he 
becomes very much interested in her. 

Mrs. Biddle, a severe and energetic Friend, has a lonely 
old neighbor who is her uninvited guest beside her fire 
every evening. This friend, Mrs. Clark, has changed 
greatly since their girlhood, and is now dirty and eccen¬ 
tric, though she is intelligent. Mrs. Biddle disapproves 
of her and pays little attention to her as they sit in Mrs. 
Biddle’s home each evening. At last some incident makes 
Mrs. Biddle tell Mrs. Clark that she can stand her no 
longer, and that she must not come again until she can 
appear decently and cleanly dressed. Mrs. Clark does 
not return for three evenings, and Mrs. Biddle becomes 
uneasy and then remorseful. After a struggle with her¬ 
self she goes to see the woman, and finds her ill. Mrs. 
Biddle tries to be brusque and to conceal the anxiety 
she has felt, but Mrs. Clark understands her, and is both 
triumphant and grateful. There is a moment of under¬ 
standing. 


APPENDIX 


83 

Why does an old, deserted building, with broken windows, 
torn paper, hingeless doors, and sagging roof, always 
suggest mystery? Is a new house never haunted? Story 
of a new house that has its ghost before ever it has been 
lived in. 

• • 

A woman of forty is just entering the university. She 
is attending classes with young people in their early twenties. 
Will she be able to make the adjustment necessary to 
social intercourse or will she be simply a solitary figure 
moving through university activities alone? Is complete 
understanding ever possible between two generations for 
a long period of time, or is it only in flashing moments of 
sympathy that the two understand each other? 

It is a psychological fact that we become like those 
things we habitually do. An interesting character study 
might be developed along this line by taking an individual 
and placing him in a totally different environment and 
following his reactions over a period of time. What would 
happen to a college girl dropped into an atmosphere of 
total disregard for anything above eating, drinking and 
sleeping? If kept within such narrow limits by financial 
or geographical limitations would she come to the same 
attitude, or is anything once learned ever completely for¬ 
gotten? Is a final capitulation always inevitable? 

There are twins on the campus, almost replicas of each 
other. They look, act, and are alike, except that one seems 
to be a fainter, more washed out personality than the other. 
Could it be that one twin’s personality is simply the 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


84 

shadow of the more vigorous personality? or does en¬ 
vironment make them so similar? Work out this idea in a 
“ twin ” story. 


There is no sudden change. Changes come gradually 
— so gradually that we do not realize they are taking place. 
The people about us grow older; the things we know 
flourish and pass away; change works insidiously. At the 
end of a period of years we find that we have not accom¬ 
plished what we want — the years have gone by us. Story 
of a man who comes to late life realizing that he has 
not done any of the things that he has planned to do. 
He tries to show this fact to his son and to help him to 
avoid the same mistake — but late in life, the son, too, 
realizes that he has failed to do the things he has planned, 
and determines to help his children to do better. 


Did it ever occur to you that you have never seen the 
other side of the moon? There are so many things whose 
other sides we have never seen. Perhaps the other sides 
that we know nothing about are totally different. The 
other side of the cranky old man we know, the fruit seller 
at the corner store, the tired librarian, the cross old janitor, 
the flip little girl, — they must all have other sides which 
are full of story material. 


APPENDIX III 

ILLUSTRATION OF “ THEME ” AND “PLAN” 

Katherine Mansfield, “ The Garden Party (in the vol¬ 
ume, The Garden Party and Other Stories, Knopf, 1922, 
$2.00). 

Theme: The first imperfect but genuine realization of 
poverty and death by a sheltered, sensitive girl. 

Synopsis 

At Laura’s home preparations for the garden party are 
all-absorbing. She supervises the workmen in their de¬ 
cision as to where to put up the marquee, and is amazed 
by the fact that one of them cares for the smell of lavender. 
There follow the moving of furniture, the arrival of 
flowers and favors, conferences with mother, brother and 
sister as to costume and other details. Into this comes, 
by the servants, news of the accidental death of a workman 
who lives in a row of poor houses near Laura’s home. 
She is much disturbed, and thinks the party should be 
postponed, but her sister and mother make light of her 
attitude. The party is a great success. After it is over 
Laura’s mother decides to send some of the surplus food 
to the family of the dead man. Laura takes it, and finds 
the cottage — ashamed of her errand and her appearance. 
She is taken to see the dead man, and finds him strangely 
beautiful. Starting home she meets her brother, who is 
able to understand her fragmentary expression of her re¬ 
sponse to the whole experience. 

85 


86 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


Scenario 

I. The Garden. 

(Place descriptions emphasized) 

1. Laura’s mother tells her to supervise the placing of 

the marquee. 

2. The men choose a place for it. 

3. Laura is surprised by the action of one of them, who 

breaks and sniffs a sprig of lavender. She regrets 
class distinctions. 

II. The House. 

1. Laura is called to the telephone. She greets her 

brother warmly, as he is leaving for the office. 

2. Furniture is being rearranged. 

3. Flowers arrive. 

4. Laura’s sister tries the piano. 

5. Details of food — arrival of men with refreshments 

which have been ordered. 

III. The House— 2. 

1. News of the death of a workman neighbor (from man 

who brought refreshments). The man has a wife 
and five children. 

2. Laura appeals to her sister to stop the party. The 

sister is wholly unsympathetic. 

3. Laura appeals to her mother. She is at first amused, 

then vexed. 

4. Laura is perplexed. She intends to appeal to her 

brother, but he praises her appearance, and she 
does not. 

IV. The Garden. 

1. Bits of action and conversation. 


APPENDIX 87 

2. As they talk after the party is over, Laura’s father 

tells of the accident. 

3. Laura’s mother decides to send food to the family of 

the dead man. Laura is uncertain, but takes the 
food. 

V. The Road and Lane. 

(Place descriptions emphasized) 

Laura is embarrassed by her errand and appearance. 

VI. The Workman’s Home. 

1. She inquires if this is the place. 

2. She determines not to stop. 

3. She is ushered in in spite of herself. 

4. The widow does not comprehend. Her sister thanks 

Laura. 

5. The sister takes Laura into the bedroom and uncovers 

the dead man’s face. It is beautiful and happy, 
but Laura is profoundly stirred. All she can say 
is “ Forgive my hat.” 

VII. The Lane. 

1. Her brother is waiting for her. 

2. He understands her attempt to say what she feels. 


APPENDIX IV 


METHODS OF CHARACTERIZATION 
Personal Description 

An old man was just coming out of the bam along the 
two planks to the back door. He was big but crippled with 
rheumatism. He wore a blue shirt, a vest with a brown 
sateen back, and gray woolen socks. He had a handsome 
old face that must have been romantic in its youth, with 
a wave of snow-white hair, a high color, a big white mus¬ 
tache and small brown eyes. He regarded the stranger with 
the wariness of a country man. It was Luke Hockaday. 

— Reprinted from the story “ A Rural Community,” 
by Ruth Suckow, in the volume Iowa Interiors, by 
permission of and special arrangement with Alfred 
A. Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers. 

Old Jack raked the cinders together with a piece of card¬ 
board and spread them judiciously over the whitening dome 
of coals. When the dome was thinly covered his face lapsed 
into darkness but, as he set himself to fan the fire again, 
his crouching shadow ascended the opposite wall and his 
face slowly re-emerged into light. It was an old man’s face, 


88 


APPENDIX 89 

very bony and hairy. The moist blue eyes blinked at the 
fire and the moist mouth fell open at times, munching once 
or twice mechanically when it closed. When the cinders 
had caught he laid the piece of cardboard against the wall, 
sighed and said: 

— Reprinted from the story “ Ivy Day in the Com¬ 
mittee Room,” by James Joyce, in the volume Dub¬ 
liners, New York, The Viking Press, Inc., copyright 
1925, B. W. Huebsch, Inc. 

Having shaved and washed himself, having inserted sev¬ 
eral artificial teeth properly, he, standing before a mirror, 
wetted the remnants of his thick, pearly-gray hair and 
plastered it down around his swarthy-yellow skull, with 
brushes set in silver; drew a suit of cream-coloured silk 
underwear over his strong old body, beginning to be full 
at the waist from excesses in food, and put silk socks 
and dancing slippers on his shrivelled, splayed feet; sitting 
down, he put in order his black trousers, drawn high by 
black silk braces, as well as his snowy-white shirt, with the 
bosom bulging out; put the links through the glossy cuffs, 
and began the torturous pursuit of the collar-button under¬ 
neath the stiffly starched collar. The floor was still swaying 
beneath him, the tips of his fingers pained him greatly, 
the collar-button at times nipped hard the flabby skin in the 
hollow under his Adam’s-apple, but he was persistent and 
finally, his eyes glittering from the exertion, his face all 
livid from the collar that was choking his throat, — a collar 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


90 

far too tight, — he did contrive to accomplish his task, and 
sat down in exhaustion in front of the pier glass, reflected in 
it from head to foot, a reflection that was repeated in all 
the other mirrors. 

— Reprinted from the story “The Gentleman from 
San Francisco,” by Ivan Bunin, in the volume The 
Gentleman from San Francisco, by permission of and 
special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 
authorized publishers. 

Conversation 

Anyways, it wasn’t long before he was makin’ enough to 
live on, though they tell me that he never dunned nobody 
for what they owed him, and the folks here certainly has 
got the owin’ habit, even in my business. If I had all that 
was cornin’ to me for just shaves alone, I could go to Car- 
terville and put up at the Mercer for a week and see a 
different picture every night. For instance, they’s old 
George Purdy — but I guess I shouldn’t ought to be 
gossipin’. 

Well, last year, our coroner died, died of the flu. " Ken 
Beatty, that was his name. He was the coroner. So they 
had to choose another man to be coroner in his place and 
they picked Doc Stair. He laughed at first and said he 
didn’t want it, but they made him take it. It ain’t no job 
that anybody would fight for and what a man makes out 
of it in a year would just about buy seeds for their garden. 


APPENDIX 


9i 

Doc’s the kind, though, that can’t say no to nothin’ if you 
keep at him long enough. 

— Reprinted from the story “Haircut,” by Ring 
Lardner, in the volume The Love Nest and Other 
Stories, by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons, 
authorized publishers. 

Conversation with Action and Personal Description 

. . . Then every face suddenly turned again toward 
Burl Teeters, who was now leaning far out over the engine’s 
tool box and shaking his short arm up at Jay Westwright, 
who still stood on top of the separator. Burl was all but 
screaming at Westwright, in a voice that sounded more than 
ever like the wild tinkling of a little bell. “ Now you’re 
satisfied, eh ?” He kept repeating this almost in the same 
words. 

Jay Westwright’s head jerked backward. He looked at 
first startled, then bewildered. But slowly his long face 
shortened in a sneer, only to widen finally in a look of 
mingled contempt and pity. 

Then with a quick leap Burl was on the ground. He 
came toward the separator in a half run and stopped just 
below the end of the conveyor. The yelling began again. 
“ What you have to say about it ? I’m just darin’ you 
to say somethin’. I just dare you.” 

Finally Jay started to answer, and Burl stopped abruptly 
in a challenging silence. Jay’s voice was strangely calm and 
steady. “ No, I ain’t got nothin’ to say, Burl. I ain’t sayin’ 


92 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


anything to you. You just be quiet, and let’s not have any 
trouble. ’Nough trouble, as it is.” 

Burl stepped back from the separator a pace or two, then 
burst into a thin, piercing laugh. The laughter continued, 
growing higher and more shrill until at last it suddenly 
dropped to a sort of jerky cackle. Then Burl’s face be¬ 
came smaller and menacing as he said, “ Yeah, you won’t 
say anything ! You don’t dare, that’s what you don’t. 
You don’t dare say anything about my runnin’ that engine. 
It’s your fault anyway, an’ you know it. You bought that 
engine an’ you got slippin’ levers, that’s what you did. 
That’s what caused all this.” Burl’s short crooked arm 
straightened a little as it swept the belt lying on the ground. 
“ I ain’t goin’ to have nothin’ to do with it. It’s your fault 
anyways, ’taint mine. Buyin’ that engine ... it was all 
your doin’s. Now just fix her up if you want to. That’s 
what you can do.” 

Burl Teeters turned from the separator and started walk¬ 
ing away in the direction of Bert Helker’s barn up beyond 
the pasture. The slight bow in his legs seemed very wide 
as he went on with a kind of short stamping stride. Half 
way to the barn he wheeled about and suddenly yelled back 
wildly at Jay Westwright, “ If I hear of you sayin’ any¬ 
thing ...” His voice rose so shrill it became unintel¬ 
ligible. He turned again and went on toward the barn. 
And a little while later the man standing about the threshing 
machine saw Burl leave Bert Helker’s farmyard in a buggy 


APPENDIX 


93 

amidst a cloud of dust that kept following the buggy until 
it was beyond the hedge at the other side of the orchard. 

— From the story “ The Threshing Ring,” by Leo L. 

Ward, in The Midland for July, 1930 . (See Edward 

J. O’Brien’s Best Short Stories of 1931.) 

Nurse Andrews was simply fearful about butter. Really 
they couldn’t help feeling that about butter, at least, she 
took advantage of their kindness. And she had that mad¬ 
dening habit of asking for just an inch more bread to finish 
what she had on her plate, and then, at the last mouthful, 
absent-mindedly — of course it wasn’t absent-mindedly — 
taking another helping. Josephine got very red when this 
happened, and she fastened her small, bead-like eyes on the 
tablecloth as if she saw a minute strange insect creeping 
through the web of it. But Constantia’s long, pale face 
lengthened and set, and she gazed away — away — far over 
the desert, to where that line of camels unwound like a 
thread of wool. . . . 

“ When I was with Lady Tukes,” said Nurse Andrews, 
“ she had such a dainty little con tray vance for the buttah. 
It was a silvah Cupid balanced on the — on the bordah of 
a glass dish, holding a tayny fork. And when you wanted 
some buttah you simply pressed his foot and he bent down 
and speared you a piece. It was quite a gayme.” 

Josephine could hardly bear that. But “ I think those 
things are very extravagant ” was all she said. 

“ But whey? ” asked Nurse Andrews, beaming through 


94 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


her eyeglasses. “ No one surely, would take more buttah 
than one wanted — would one ?” 

“ Ring, Con,” cried Josephine. She couldn’t trust her¬ 
self to reply. 

And proud young Kate, the enchanted princess, came in 
to see what the old tabbies wanted now. She snatched 
away their plates of mock something or other and slapped 
down a white, terrified blancmange. 

“Jam, please, Kate,” said Josephine kindly. 

Kate knelt and burst open the sideboard, lifted the lid 
of the jam-pot, saw it was empty, put it on the table, and 
stalked off. 

“ I’m afraid,” said Nurse Andrews a moment later, “ there 
isn’t any.” 

“ Oh, what a bother ! ” said Josephine. She bit her lip. 
“ What had we better do ?” 

Constantia looked dubious. “ We can’t disturb Kate 
again,” she said softly. 

Nurse Andrews waited, smiling at them both. Her eyes 
wandered, spying at everything behind her eye-glasses. 
Constantia in despair went back to her camels. Josephine 
frowned heavily — concentrated. If it hadn’t been for this 
idiotic women she and Con would, of course, have eaten 
their blancmange without. Suddenly the idea came. 

“ I know,” she said. “ Marmalade. There’s some mar¬ 
malade in the sideboard. Get it, Con.” 

“I hope,” laughed Nurse Andrews, and her laugh was 


APPENDIX 


95 

like a spoon tinkling against a medicine-glass — “I hope 
it’s not very bittah marmalayde.” 

— Reprinted from the story “The Daughters of the 
Late Colonel,” by Katherine Mansfield, in the volume 
The Garden Party, by permission of and special ar¬ 
rangement with Alfred A, Knopf, Inc., authorized 
publishers. 

Attitude of Others 

Mr. O’Connor tore a strip off the card and, lighting it, 
lit his cigarette. As he did so the flame lit up a leaf of 
dark glossy ivy in the lapel of his coat. The old man 
watched him attentively and then, taking up the piece of 
cardboard again, began to fan the fire slowly while his com¬ 
panion smoked. 

“ Ah, yes,” he said, continuing, “ it’s hard to know what 
way to bring up children. Now who’d think he’d turn out 
like that ! I sent him to the Christian Brothers and I done 
what I could for him, and there he goes boozing about. I 
tried to make him someway decent.” 

He replaced the cardboard wearily. 

“ Only I’m an old man now I’d change his tune for him. 
I’d take the stick to his back and beat him while I could 
stand over him — as I done many a time before. The 
mother, you know, she cocks him up with this and 
that. . . ” 

“ That’s what ruins children,” said Mr. O’Connor. 

“ To be sure it is,” said the old man. “ And little thanks 


96 SHORT STORY WRITING 

you get for it, only impudence. He takes th’ upper hand 
of me whenever he sees I’ve a sup taken. What’s the world 
coming to when sons speaks that way to their fathers ?” 

“ What age is he ?” said Mr. O’Connor. 

“ Nineteen,” said the old man. 

“ Why don’t you put him to something ?” 

“ Sure, amm’t I never done at the drunken bowsy ever 
since he left school ? ‘ I won’t keep you,’ I says. ‘You 

must get a job for yourself.’ But, sure, it’s worse whenever 
he gets a job; he drinks it all.” 

— Reprinted from the story “Ivy Day in the Com¬ 
mittee Room,” by James Joyce, in the volume Dub¬ 
liners, New York, The Viking Press, Inc., copyright 
1925, B. W. Huebsch, Inc. 

“ Funny thing,” commented the teamster one evening. 
“ We used to think you wasn’t human exactly.” He 
laughed heartily. “ Gotta get acquainted with a guy, ain’t 
you? ” 

Then his wife, a thin, washed-out little woman, em¬ 
barrassed the little clerk greatly by saying gravely, 

“ Mr. Neal, you’re a good man.” 

Her eyes were on the little cripple. 

— From the story “The Man with the Good Face,” 
by Frank Luther Mott, in The Midland for Decem¬ 
ber, 1920. (See Edward J. O’Brien’s Best Short 
Stories of 1921.) 


APPENDIX 


97 


Place Description 

He came to the very edge of town, almost to the woods 
through which Honey Creek ran. A house stood at the 
turn of the road. Of all things he had seen it was the most 
autumnal. It stood plain and white against the depths of 
blue sky. Its trees were turning to pale yellow, its yard 
scattered with dry leaves. On the back porch yellow seed 
corn hung by the bleached husks to dry. Hickory nuts and 
walnuts were spread out on a piece of rag carpet. On the 
fence posts, orange pumpkins were set in blue granite kettles 
to ripen. The corn in the small field was in the shock. The 
smell of apples came from somewhere. 

— Reprinted from the story “ A Rural Community,” 
by Ruth Suckow, in the volume Iowa Interiors, by 
permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. 
Knopf, Inc., authorized publishers. 

Introspection 

If mother had lived, might they have married ? But 
there had been nobody for them to marry. There had been 
father’s Anglo-Indian friends before he quarreled with them. 
But after that she and Constantia never had met a single 
man except clergymen. How did one meet men ? Or even 
if they’d met them, how could they have got to know men 
well enough to be more than strangers? One read of people 
having adventures, being followed, and so on. But nobody 
had ever followed Constantia and her. Oh yes, there had 
been one year at Eastbourne a mysterious man at their. 


98 SHORT STORY WRITING 

boarding-house who had put a note on the jug of hot water 
outside their bedroom door! But by the time Connie had 
found it the steam had made the writing too faint to read; 
they couldn’t even make out to which of them it was ad¬ 
dressed. And he had left next day. And that was all. The 
rest had been looking after father, and at the same time 
keeping out of father’s way. But now ? But now ? The 
thieving sun touched Josephine gently. She lifted her face. 
She was drawn over to the window by gentle beams. . * . 

— Reprinted from the story “ The Daughters of the 
Late Colonel,” by Katherine Mansfield, in the volume 
The Garden Party , by permission of and special ar¬ 
rangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., authorized 
publishers. 

After an hour or so of hemorrhage the bishop looked 
much thinner, paler, and wasted; his face looked wrinkled, 
his eyes looked bigger, and he seemed older, shorter, and 
it seemed to him that he was thinner, weaker, more insig¬ 
nificant than anyone, that everything that had been had 
retreated far, far away and would never go on again or be 
repeated. 

“ How good,” he thought, “ how good! ” 

His old mother came. Seeing his wrinkled face and his 
big eyes, she was frightened, she fell on her knees by the 
bed and began kissing his face, his shoulders, his hands. 
And to her, too, it seemed that he was thinner, weaker, and 
more insignificant than anyone, and now she forgot that he 


APPENDIX 


99 

was a bishop, and kissed him as though he were a child 
very near and very dear to her. 

“ Pavlusha, darling,” she said; “ my own, my darling 
son ! . . . Why are you like this ? Pavlusha, answer me! ” 
Katya, pale and severe, stood beside her, unable to under¬ 
stand what was the matter with her uncle, why there was 
such a look of suffering on her grandmother’s face, why 
she was saying such sad and touching things. By now 
he could not utter a word, he could understand nothing, 
and he imagined he was a simple ordinary man, that he 
was walking quickly, cheerfully through the fields, tapping 
with his stick, while above him was the open sky bathed 
in sunshine, and that he was free now as a bird and could 
go where he liked ! 

— Reprinted from the story “ The Bishop,” by Anton 
Chehov, in the volume The Bishop, by permission of 
The Macmillan Company, publishers 


APPENDIX V 


Style 

The lamp had a tin reflector, brown with rust and 
covered with dust. The people who went up the stairway- 
followed with their feet the feet of many who had gone 
before. The soft boards of the stairs had yielded under 
the pressure of feet and deep hollows marked the way. 

— From the story “ Death ” by Sherwood 
4 Anderson, in Winesburg, Ohio (Modern Library). 

The crowd swept together like leaves of the aspen blown 
by the four winds into one heap. From the village of 
Nahum it gathered, from the sea’s edge, and from the 
fields along the road into the country beyond, leaving the 
village empty, the fishing boats riding idly at anchor, and 
the fields stripped of husbandmen although the month 
was Sivan,. season of wheat harvest. 

— From the story “ The Scarlet One,” by George 

Carver, in Stones from the Midland (Alfred A. 

Knopf). 

Glancing round, she saw all the windows giving on to 
the lawn were curtainless and dark. The house had a 
sterile appearance, as if it were still used, but not in¬ 
habited. A shadow seemed to go over her. She went 
across the lawn towards the garden, through an arch of 
crimson ramblers, a gate of colour. There beyond lay 
the soft blue sea within the bay, misty with morning, 


IOO 


APPENDIX 


IOI 


and the farthest headland of black rock jutting dimly out 
between blue and blue of the sky and water. Her face 
began to shine, transfigured with pain and joy. At her 
feet the garden fell steeply, all a confusion of flowers, 
and away below was the darkness of tree-tops covering the 
beck. 

— From the story “The Shadow in the Rose 
Garden,” by D. H. Lawrence, in Georgian 
Stories (G. P. Putnam’s Sons). 

The horses stood with hanging heads. It was still. 
The man in the carriage stretched himself out, folded his 
arms. He felt the sun beat on his knees. His head was 
sunk on his breast. “ Hish, hish,” sounded from the sea. 
The wind sighed in the valley and was quiet. He felt 
himself, lying there, a hollow man, a parched, withered 
man, as it were, of ashes. And the sea sounded, “ Hish, 
hish.” 

It was then that he saw the tree, that he was conscious 
of its presence just inside a garden gate. It was an im¬ 
mense tree with a round, thick silver stem and a great 
arc of copper leaves that gave back the light and yet 
were sombre. There was something beyond the tree — 
a whiteness, a softness, an opaque mass, half-hidden, — with 
delicate pillars. As he looked at the tree he felt his 
breathing die away and he became part of the silence. 
It seemed to grow, it seemed to expand in the quivering 
heat until the great carved leaves hid the sky^and yet 
it was motionless. Then from within its depths or from 
beyond there came the sound of a woman’s voice. A woman 
was singing. The warm untroubled voice floated upon the 
air, and it was all part of the silence as he was part of 
it. Suddenly, as the voice rose, soft, dreaming, gentle, 


102 


SHORT STORY WRITING 


he knew that it would come floating to him from the hidden 
leaves and his peace was shattered. What was happening 
to him? Something stirred in his breast. Something dark, 
something unbearable and dreadful pushed in his bosom, 
and like a great weed it floated, rocked ... it was warm, 
stifling. He tried to struggle to tear at it, and at the 
same moment — all was over. Deep, deep, he sank into 
the silence, staring at the tree and waiting for the voice 
that came floating, falling, until he felt himself enfolded. 

— From the story “ The Escape,” by Katherine 

Mansfield, in the volume Bliss (Alfred A. 

Knopf), 


















































